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Cartagena Colombia.
This is my third visit to Cartagena, Columbia, a historically significant city, with a rich history, founded in 1533, by the Spanish Crown. Importantly it served as Spain’s center of trade, its treasury hub, and its American base for the slave trade. Cartagena was protected by seven fortresses and known for its gold and emerald mining. It’s charming old town with its maze of cobbled alleys, bougainvillea-covered balconies, picturesque parks, colonial plazas, and massive churches, is a UNESCO world heritage site. Cartagena is a walled city with a monumental fort that continues to be the most outstanding feet of Spanish military engineering in the New World. Today, I visited the old town, the fort, the Navy Museum, the Cathedral, the home of the former president where the constitution was created in 1886, and a former neighborhood containing dungeons and ramparts where troops stored provisions. I also visited the Palace of Inquisition (The Catholic church never recognized anyone’s innocence), and Saint Peter Claver, cloister and monastery built in homage to the protector of slaves. The palace of inquisition museum contained replicas of torture devices used to force residents to convert to Catholicism. They either converted or were killed, many via guillotine.
Although I have taken this tour in the past, I never tire of hearing about the city’s rich history.
