Santa Marta

The Tairona built stone-paved towns with terraces and water channels in the Sierra Nevada long before Europeans arrived, and their goldwork and pottery are still being recovered. Rodrigo de Bastidas, who had sailed this coast with Juan de la Cosa around 1501, founded Santa Marta on the bay by tradition on 29 July 1525, the feast of Saint Martha, making it one of the first Spanish settlements in Colombia and its oldest surviving city. Its cathedral and customs house date from the 18th century.

On 17 December 1830 Simón Bolívar, ill with tuberculosis, died at the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino just outside town. His body lay in state in the Casa de la Aduana and was buried in the cathedral before being moved to Caracas. Between about 1840 and 1870 the city was the main import and export port of the new republic, but an earthquake in 1834, cholera in 1849 and floods cut its population.

The 20th century brought the banana boom of the United Fruit Company in the plains to the south, which ended in tragedy in 1928, when striking banana, railway and port workers were killed by the army in the square at Ciénaga. Tourism began in the 1950s with hotels on the beach at El Rodadero; the University of Magdalena opened in 1958 and Tayrona park was created in 1964. From the early 2000s Santa Marta became one of the country's main coal ports, and a new airport terminal opened in 2017, the year the city hosted the Bolivarian Games.

Santa Marta's identity is bound up with the sea and the mountains behind it. The city's white and blue flag stands for peace and for the sky, the sea and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada, which rises to about 5,700 metres within 42 km of the coast. The Kogi, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo, descendants of the Tairona, still live in the Sierra and regard it as the heart of the world; the national park was created partly to protect their spiritual centres, and it closes for set periods each year to let the land rest.

The city is proud of its Bolívar story — the Quinta, the customs house and an equestrian statue of the Liberator — and of its founding, marked by a statue of Bastidas on the bayside promenade. Two of the best-known modern Colombians come from here: the vallenato singer Carlos Vives and the footballer Carlos Valderrama.

Life is costeño in tone: relaxed, informal and lived outdoors, with music from shopfronts and families on the beach at weekends. Sunset on the city beach, with the islet of El Morro and its lighthouse in the bay, is a daily gathering, and the evening is the time for street food and walks along the promenade. Taganga adds a cosmopolitan layer of backpackers and diving schools.

The 2018 census counted about 500,000 people in the district of Santa Marta, the capital of Magdalena department and one of the four largest cities of the Caribbean coast. The economy rests mainly on tourism, followed by trade, the port, fishing and farming. The deep natural harbour ships coal — by 2005 more than half of Colombia's coal exports — and the main farm products of the district are bananas, coffee, mango, citrus, cocoa and cassava.

The city stretches along the coast in distinct parts. The historic centre, with its commercial streets and plazas, sits around the bay between the port and the Manzanares river; El Rodadero, to the south, is a district of apartment towers built for holidaymakers from the interior; and the newer residential neighbourhoods spread inland towards the hills. Taganga to the north and Minca in the foothills are separate villages within the district, both reshaped by tourism.

Days start early and slow down in the afternoon heat, and the beaches fill at weekends and in the holiday seasons, when Colombian holidaymakers crowd El Rodadero. Students of the University of Magdalena give parts of the city a younger feel. Buses without fixed stops and taxis carry most journeys, and the coast road east to Tayrona and La Guajira is busy with shared vans.

The cooking of Santa Marta draws on the sea, the plantain and the maize of the coast. Cayeye, a speciality of Magdalena, is made from mashed green bananas. Green plantain is also fried into tajadas and patacones. Fried fish with coconut rice is the classic beach lunch, and fish soups and sancocho, a thick stew of meat or fish with root vegetables, are everyday dishes.

Maize flour makes arepas, empanadas and bollos, and at night street vendors in the centre sell meat skewers, sausages, rice in coconut milk and fried snacks. A local habit is the shrimp cocktail, sold by vendors near the city beach who have worked the same corner for decades. The Parque de los Novios has become the centre of the restaurant scene, with everything from Colombian dishes to international menus.

Drinks follow the coastal pattern: fresh fruit juices made with water or milk, cold beer and rum, and coffee. Hot chocolate and tinto, sweet black coffee, are sold everywhere.