Take one dash of “faded colonial grandeur,” said Oliver Schwaner-Albright in Travel + Leisure. “Add a dose of sultry nightlife,” a smattering of sophisticated travelers, and you’ve got “the next great Caribbean hot spot.” Cartagena de Indias, Colombia’s 18th-century walled city, has long been known as “one of the prettiest cities anywhere.” Nobel Prize–winning author Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, Cartagena’s “most famous part-time resident,” set Love in the Time of Cholera in a fictionalized version of the place.
Following its founding in 1533, the city was repeatedly sacked by pirates and privateers such as Sir Francis Drake. So the population built the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, “one of the largest fortresses in the Spanish Empire.” By the early 1700s, the city was impregnable. It also became “excessively wealthy,” thanks to an economy built on sugar, gold, and slavery. One relic of that prosperity is the city’s abundant colonial architecture. The old city is divided into four quarters, and the busiest is the Centro, where life revolves around the Plaza de Bolivar. Since the city was “a stronghold of the Inquisition,” one side of this public square is dominated by the imposingly baroque Palacio de la Inquisition. It’s now a museum whose assorted torture devices “illustrate how a little wrought iron might shape one’s faith.”
Many streets surrounding the Plaza de Bolivar are filled with 400-year-old houses that have been transformed into boutique hotels with 20-foot-high ceilings—some minimalist, others filled with antiques, and all with courtyards or rooftop terraces. Elsewhere, convents have been converted into chic hotels. Stylish restaurants abound, and most have two things in common—white sangria and “sophisticated Caribbean cuisine.” Regulars often wave away the menu and simply order the grilled fish of the day. The best bars and clubs in Cartagena can be found in the working-class district of GetsemanÃ. At Quiebra Canto, diners spill onto the balcony and “salsa music lasts late into the night.”
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