Cartagena's culture runs deeper than its walls: pre-Hispanic zenú goldwork, a cloistered baroque theatre with a Botero ceiling, Colombia's densest street-art barrio, and the first free Black town in the Americas an hour inland.
Banco de la República's Caribbean gold museum in a colonial house on Plaza de Bolívar, showing zenú filigree earrings, nose rings and funerary ceramics from the Sinú floodplain irrigation culture. Tue–Sat 09:00–17:00, Sun 10:00–16:00, closed Mondays.
Two-building museum on Plaza San Pedro Claver holding Alejandro Obregón's Caribbean abstractions, Enrique Grau canvases and rotating Colombian shows in a 17th-century customs annexe. Tue–Fri 09:00–12:00 and 15:00–19:00, Sat 10:00–13:00.
Jesuit complex where the 'slave of the slaves' died in 1654: a three-tier coral-stone cloister of orange trees, Claver's bones displayed in a glass reliquary beneath the high altar, and a colonial religious-art collection in the upper galleries.
The Caribbean-timber house of the president who wrote Colombia's national anthem lyrics and the 1886 constitution, kept with his furniture, library and writing desk. Facing the Ermita del Cabrero where he is entombed, on the lagoon north of the walls.
Built into the shell of the 1622 Iglesia de la Merced and reopened in 1911, this horseshoe-tier theatre carries Enrique Grau's painted ceiling fresco of a Caribbean muse. Guided daytime visits run when there is no rehearsal on the stage.
Restored Spanish-cooperation cultural centre in a colonial cloister off Plaza Santo Domingo, running free photography and contemporary-art exhibitions, a Caribbean reference library and a courtyard café under the arcades.
The 1770 Inquisition palace with Cartagena's finest baroque stone portal and the denunciation window on the plaza wall. Galleries cover Holy Office trials, torture instruments and the city's independence history. Open daily 09:00–18:00.
From dusk the plaza in front of the 1643 Iglesia de la Santísima Trinidad fills with picó speakers, champeta dancers, breakdance circles and Palenque drum groups — the barrio's nightly, unticketed performance space rather than a staged show.
The first free Black town in the Americas, founded around 1600 by Benkos Biohó's escaped maroons — UNESCO Intangible Heritage for its palenquero creole, lumbalú funeral rites and drum lineages. Casa de la Cultura and the Biohó statue anchor the visit.
The barrio's murals map its own history — displaced fishermen, Yamir Alvarez's portraits of longtime residents, umbrella and flag canopies over Calle de la Sierpe, and gentrification-protest pieces painted by the neighbourhood collective itself.
Cartagena's real market east of the centre: mojarra and sierra fish laid on ice, ñame and yuca stalls, herbalists selling ritual plants, and picós blasting champeta between the aisles. Chaotic, unpolished and where the city actually shops.
Augustinian convent of 1607 on the 150m ridge above the city, with a flowered cloister, the Virgen de la Candelaria chapel and the legend of the golden goat idol destroyed by Fray Alonso. La Candelaria festival fills it every 2 February.