Mérida

Captain Juan Rodríguez Suárez founded Mérida on 9 October 1558, during a mining expedition from Pamplona in New Granada, and named it after his home town of Mérida in Extremadura. The foundation had not been authorised, and in 1560 the authorities of New Granada sent Juan de Maldonado to arrest him and regularise the new city. For much of the colonial era Mérida was governed from Bogotá rather than Caracas, before becoming part of the Captaincy General of Venezuela.

A seminary founded in 1785 grew into the University of the Andes, and the city played an active part in the War of Independence; Bolívar marched through it on his Admirable Campaign in 1813. One of its oldest churches, from the 18th century, had to be rebuilt in 1907 after an earthquake, and the present cathedral was built over a century and a half, from 1805 until 1960.

The 20th century opened Mérida to the rest of the country. An airport was inaugurated on the city's outskirts in 1946, the cable car to Pico Espejo opened to the public in 1960, and with these and the trans-Andean highway, tourism and services displaced farming as the economic base. The population tripled after 1971, and the university made Mérida one of the country's leading educational centres. Commercial flights at the city airport, by then surrounded by housing, were suspended from 2008 to 2013 after a crash, and the original cable car shut in 2008 for a reconstruction that ended in 2016.

The University of the Andes sets the city's tone. Students make up a large share of the population, and bookshops, cheap cafés, research centres and an outdoorsy, politically active campus life give Mérida a character unlike any other Venezuelan city. Its mountain setting also draws people to a variety of extreme sports.

Catholic custom runs deeper here than on the coast. The Paradura del Niño, in which families stand up the infant Jesus in the crib with songs, prayers, fireworks, wine and cake, runs from January into early February; the Fiesta de San Benito, from 12 to 31 January, brings drummers' processions and street dancing; and on 2 February the Vasallos de la Candelaria dance for the Virgin. Holy Week brings a living passion play, and the old year is burned in effigy at New Year.

The Feria del Sol, held in February alongside Carnival, is the city's great fair, known as the Bullfighting Carnival of America, with bullfights in the 16,000-seat bullring built in 1967, concerts, parades and the election of a festival queen. Mérida is proud of its many parks and squares — at least a dozen squares and two dozen parks.

The 2011 census counted about 200,000 people in the city and about 390,000 in the metropolitan area, which takes in Ejido, Tabay and neighbouring municipalities. The city is squeezed onto a long, sloping terrace between rivers, so it has grown lengthwise: its south-eastern part, once the land of sugar-cane haciendas, has filled with family houses and grown almost to meet Ejido.

The economy rests on the university, government, commerce and, historically, tourism, which fell sharply during the crisis. The surrounding mountains supply potatoes, vegetables and farmed trout to the whole country, and busetas carry thousands of people between Ejido and the centre each day.

Mornings start cool and early, with students crossing the city to classes, and the evenings are sharp enough for a jacket. Like the rest of the Andean states, Mérida has lived through long power cuts and fuel queues, and many young people have emigrated, often overland into Colombia.

The Andean breakfast is the pisca andina, a broth of potatoes, egg, spring onion and coriander, served with the arepa de trigo, a small, dense wheat-flour arepa quite different from the maize arepa of the rest of Venezuela. Pastelitos, fried pastries filled with spiced meat, are another everyday snack. Trout farmed in the cold mountain streams is the local fish, cooked in many ways in cafés across the city.

Andean cheeses include fresh white cheese and smoked queso ahumado, and Mérida is known for its sweets, above all the dulces abrillantados, sugar-glazed figures of milk fudge in bright colours. The Mercado Principal sells regional food, produce and folk art.

Heladería Coromoto became famous for the sheer number of its ice-cream flavours — 860 at one count — after its founder found that avocado, launched as a novelty, was a hit; garlic and chilli followed. Fresh fruit juices and strong coffee are drunk everywhere, and miche, the Andean spirit, is taken against the cold.