Cali was founded in 1536 by Sebastián de Belalcázar, making it one of the oldest cities in the Americas. Three days trace its Calima goldsmiths, colonial monasteries, slave-worked sugar haciendas and the 1810 rebellion that made Valle del Cauca fight first.
Cali's oldest standing building, begun 1545 on the spot where the founding mass was said in 1536. Thick whitewashed adobe walls, a Mudéjar timber ceiling and the venerated Virgen de las Mercedes. Open Tue–Sun 09:00–13:00, 15:00–18:00.
Goldwork of the Calima culture, which worked the Valle del Cauca from 1600 BC: hammered nose ornaments, funerary masks and pectorals recovered from shaft tombs. Free entry, Tue–Fri 09:00–17:00, Sat 10:00–17:00, Calle 7 No. 4-69.
The Ortiz bridge was built 1845 by friar José Ignacio Ortiz using egg whites in the mortar — Cali's first crossing of the Río Cali. Beside it stands the neo-Gothic Ermita of 1942, replacing a 1678 chapel destroyed by the 1925 earthquake.
The 1937 bronze of Cali's conquistador founder points west toward the valley he claimed on 25 July 1536. Toppled by Misak indigenous activists in 2020, the plinth and its contested plaques remain a live lesson in how Colombia argues with its past.
University collection of pre-Hispanic Valle del Cauca material excavated by Cubillos himself, including Malagana-culture finds looted from a sugar farm in 1992 and partly recovered. Mon–Fri 08:00–12:00, 14:00–17:00.
Downtown block tied to 3 July 1810, when Cali's cabildo abierto declared itself free of the Popayán crown government — six days before Bogotá's cry. Plaques mark the vanished colonial casa where the act was signed.
The 18th-century Franciscan complex holds Colombia's finest Mudéjar bell tower, finished 1772 in geometric brickwork by a mason trained in Moorish patterning. The adjoining Capilla de la Inmaculada keeps its original gilded altarpiece.
The plaza is named for Joaquín de Caycedo y Cuero, executed by royalists in 1813 for leading Valle's independence junta. The 1933 Palacio Nacional in French neoclassical stone and the 1926 cathedral frame the square where his sentence was proclaimed.
Sugar hacienda of 1750 built by the Caycedo family with enslaved African labour, and the setting for Jorge Isaacs' 1867 novel María. Original mud-brick house, chapel and slave-quarter foundations survive. Tue–Sun 09:00–16:00.
The 1816 house where Jorge Isaacs spent his youth and set María, Latin America's defining Romantic novel. Restored rooms hold Isaacs family furniture and the letters that fixed this valley in the national imagination. About 45 km north of Cali.
Sugar-mill museum in a 17th-century hacienda: wooden trapiches driven by oxen, mule and water, tracing four centuries of the cane economy that enslaved thousands and built the Valle's landowning families. Tue–Sun 09:00–16:00.
Working-class barrio settled from the 1930s by Chocó and Buenaventura migrants who brought currulao drums and, later, the record collections that made Cali a salsa city. Its casetas and vinyl bars are the neighbourhood's living archive.