Villa de Leyva

When the Spanish arrived, the valley belonged to the Muisca and was ruled by the zaque of Hunza, whose seat stood where Tunja is now. The Muisca left their mark in the standing stones of El Infiernito and in the legend of Lake Iguaque, in the mountains above the valley, from which the first mother, Bachué, was said to have emerged.

The town was founded on 12 June 1572 and named after Andrés Díaz Venero de Leiva, the first president of the New Kingdom of Granada. It lay away from the main trade routes, in a dry valley with no mineral deposits worth exploiting, and so it grew slowly and changed little: its streets and large central plaza are still paved with cobblestones, and many buildings date from the 16th century. In 1812 the First Congress of the United Provinces of New Granada met in a house on the main square, and the independence leader Antonio Nariño spent his last years and died in the town.

The isolation that kept Villa de Leyva poor preserved it. It was declared a national monument in 1954 and became one of Colombia's Heritage Towns in 2010, and it is on Colombia's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status. Tourism, mostly from Bogotá, now drives the town, and the valley's fossils — from the Paja Formation, among the richest fossil-bearing rocks of Colombia — have made it a centre of palaeontology.

Villa de Leyva's identity is bound up with its preserved colonial fabric: whitewashed walls, green or brown wooden doors and balconies, clay tiles and cobbles that residents and the heritage rules keep largely unchanged. The Plaza Mayor is the town's stage, where storytellers perform weekly for passers-by and festivals take over through the year.

The calendar is unusually full for a small town. A festival of astronomy comes at the start of the year; a jazz festival comes in the middle of the year; the August kite festival fills the windy skies over the valley; a gastronomic festival is held in November; and on 7 December the Festival of Lights opens the Christmas season. Smaller celebrations include a water festival, a tree festival and an onion beauty pageant in October.

The town shares the rural culture of Boyacá: woollen ruanas, pottery from nearby Ráquira, and tejo, the national sport, played with heavy discs and small charges of gunpowder. Newcomers from the cities, drawn by the peace and quiet of the countryside, have settled in the valley and brought their own culture with them.

The 2018 census counted about 14,400 people in the municipality, roughly half of them in the town and the rest in the rural districts around it. Life changes with the week. On weekdays the town is calm, with locals crossing an almost empty square; at weekends and on public holidays visitors from Bogotá fill the guesthouses, restaurants and streets.

Tourism is the main source of work — guesthouses, restaurants, craft shops, guides and transport — alongside farming in the valley and a young wine industry that has grown up around the town in recent years, helped by the cool temperatures, dry climate and rich soil.

The area's landscape is fragile. The semi-desert valley receives little rain, and the mountains of Iguaque above it are an important source of water for the whole area; a forest fire once burned a large part of the Iguaque sanctuary. Local tour operators guide visitors into the Iguaque sanctuary and across the desert, with its viewpoints and blue pools, and at festival time many young visitors camp in the valley.

Villa de Leyva eats in the Boyacá way: hearty highland food built for cool evenings. Cuchuco, a thick soup of wheat with pork ribs, potatoes and beans, is the regional classic, and the sweet arepas boyacenses, made with wheat flour, cheese and panela, are sold in shops and markets. Changua, a breakfast soup of milk, eggs and spring onion, and hot chocolate with cheese are morning staples, as across the Andean highlands.

For visitors, the restaurants in the colonial houses around the Plaza Mayor serve everything from regional dishes to international cooking aimed at weekenders from Bogotá, while a few blocks away small places serve the menú del día. Bread, sweets and dairy from the plateau are part of everyday eating.

The valley's newest product is wine: a number of wineries have opened around the town in recent years, taking advantage of the cool, dry climate. Aguardiente and chicha, the old fermented maize drink of the highlands, remain the traditional drinks of the region.