Cartagena was Spain's fortified treasure port and the seat of the Inquisition in South America. Over three days you follow the walls of 1586, the tunnels of San Felipe, the tribunal of the Plaza de Bolívar and the barrio where independence was declared in 1811.
Begun 1536 on the Cerro de San Lázaro and enlarged by engineer Antonio de Arévalo after 1762. Its galleries were designed so defenders could hear attackers' footsteps through the stone. Open 08:00–18:00 daily; go at opening before the hilltop heats up.
Built 1580–1654, this is where the Jesuit Pedro Claver ministered to enslaved Africans arriving at the port; his remains lie in a glass reliquary under the altar. The cloister museum holds Afro-Caribbean religious art and colonial-era manuscripts.
Seat of the Holy Office from 1610, one of only three tribunals in Spanish America. The 1770 baroque palace keeps its stone denunciation window on the Plaza de Bolívar, torture instruments, and rooms tracing the city's founding and the 1811 independence declaration.
The oldest surviving bastion of the 11km circuit, finished in the 1610s after Francis Drake's 1586 sacking forced Spain to fortify the port. Cannon embrasures still face the open Caribbean where the English fleets appeared.
Housed in a 17th-century Jesuit building, it reconstructs the 1741 Battle of Cartagena de Indias, when Blas de Lezo — one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged — repelled Edward Vernon's 186-ship British fleet, the largest amphibious force before Normandy.
The bronze of the Basque admiral stands below San Felipe, facing the bay he defended in 1741. Vernon had already struck victory medals in London reading 'Spanish pride pulled down' before the siege collapsed with 18.000 British dead.
Augustinian monastery founded 1607 on the city's highest hill, 150m up. Its chapel to the Virgen de la Candelaria was built over a site of indigenous worship; the cloister and the panorama over the bay and the fortifications explain Cartagena's defensive geography.
The city's only landward gate until the 19th century, its Republican clock tower added in 1888 replacing the original baroque belfry. Beneath it ran the drawbridge over the moat separating the walled city from Getsemaní.
On 11 November 1811 the artisans and free Black militias of Getsemaní, led by Pedro Romero, marched from this square and forced the junta to declare absolute independence from Spain. The church dates from 1643.
The wooden Caribbean-style house of the four-time president who wrote Colombia's 1886 constitution and the national anthem's lyrics. His tomb and the neo-Gothic Ermita del Cabrero stand across the road.
Built 1753–1760 with the Batería de San José to close the Bocachica channel with a chain after the British breach of 1741. Reachable only by boat from the Muelle de la Bodeguita; the powder magazines and prison cells survive intact.
Cartagena's oldest square and the colonial customs house where enslaved Africans were taxed on arrival. From here Benkos Biohó escaped in 1599 to found Palenque, the first free town in the Americas; his statue stands in the palenque village 50km inland.