Museo del Oro
The museum has a collection of 55,000 pieces, 6,000 of which are on display in their expanded building. There are bilingual descriptions of almost all exhibits. On the first floor houses the museum’s main entrance, a shop, and a restaurant.
Exhibitions begin on the second floor. The main room is called “People and Gold in pre-Hispanic Colombia“. In glass vitrines display goldsmiths’ work from the different cultures which inhabited Colombia before the Spanish colonists arrived. The permanent exhibition is divided into different halls for every culture: Calima, Quimbaya, Muisca, Zenú, Tierradentro, San Agustín, Tolima, Tairona, and Urabá, and a special room called “After Columbus” (Después de Colón).
The exposition continues on the third floor, with “The Flying Chamanic” and “The Offering.” The first shows the process of a shamanic ceremony with its different gold pieces, the second is divided into three parts: the “Offering Room”, the “Offering Boat”, and the “Lake”.
At the end of the exposition, there is a “Profunditation Room” with artistic videos about the most important gold pieces of the museum.
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Monserrate
Monserrate | |
---|---|
Highest point | |
Elevation | 3,152 m (10,341 ft) |
Coordinates | |
Geography | |
Country | Colombia |
Region | Cundinamarca |
Provinces | |
Settlement | Bogotá, Colombia |
Parent range | Eastern Hills Altiplano Cundiboyacense Eastern Ranges Andes |
Climbing | |
First ascent | Pre-Colombian era |
Easiest route | Funicular Teleférico de Monserrate Pilgrimage trail |
Monserrate (named after Catalan homonym mountain Montserrat) is a hill that dominates the city center of Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia. It rises to 3,152 metres (10,341 ft) above the sea level, where there is a church (built in the 17th century) with a shrine, devoted to El Señor Caído (“The Fallen Lord”).
The hill, already considered sacred in pre-Colombian times when the area was inhabited by the indigenous Muisca, is a pilgrim destination, as well as a major tourist attraction. In addition to the church, the summit contains restaurants, cafeteria, souvenir shops and many smaller tourist facilities. Monserrate can be accessed by aerial tramway, a funicular or by climbing, the preferred way of pilgrims. The climbing route, however, had been indefinitely closed due to drought, and the associated wildfires and landslides. It was reopened in 2017.
All downtown Bogotá, south Bogotá and some sections of the north of the city are visible facing west, making it a popular destination to watch the sunset over the city. Every year, Monserrate and its neighbour Guadalupe attract many tourists.
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Museo de Botero
The Botero Museum also known as Museo Botero is a museum located in Bogotá, Colombia. It houses one of Latin America’s most important international art collections. It sees 500,000 visitors annually, around 1,000 daily, and of those 2,000 students per month.[1] Being in La Candelaria neighborhood of Bogotá, the museum is within close proximity to other important landmarks like the Luis Ángel Arango Library and the Gold Museum of Bogotá.
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Catedral de Sal de Zipaquira
The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá (Spanish: Catedral de Sal de Zipaquirá) is an underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 metres (220 yd) underground in a halite mountain near the city of Zipaquirá, in Cundinamarca, Colombia. It is a tourist destination and place of pilgrimage in the country.[2] The temple at the bottom has three sections, representing the birth, life, and death of Jesus. The icons, ornaments and architectural details are hand carved in the halite rock. Some marble sculptures are included.
The Salt Cathedral is considered one of the most notable achievements of Colombian architecture,[3] being described as a “Jewel of Modern Architecture”.[4] The cathedral represents a valuable cultural, environmental and religious patrimony for the Colombian people.[5]
The cathedral is a functioning church that receives as many as 3,000 visitors on Sundays, but it has no bishop and therefore no official status as a cathedral in Catholicism.
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Museo Nacional
El Museo Nacional de Colombia es el museo más antiguo de Colombia. Su acervo se divide en cuatro colecciones: arte, historia, arqueología y etnografía. Su colección de arte colombiano, latinoamericano y europeo incluye pinturas, dibujos, grabados, esculturas, instalaciones y artes decorativas desde el período colonial hasta la actualidad. Su inmueble fue originalmente la penitenciaría del panoptico, siendo su arquitecto el danés Thomas Reed, construcción que fue ordenada por Eustorgio Salgar durante su mandato como Presidente de los Estados Unidos de Colombia. Frente al museo se encuentra la estación subterránea de TransMilenio que lleva su mismo nombre “Museo Nacional“.
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Villa de Leyva
Villa de Leyva, also called Villa de Leiva, is a touristic colonial town and municipality, in the Ricaurte Province, part of the Boyacá Department of Colombia. The town is located 37 kilometres (23 mi) west of the departmental capital Tunja. It is “three and a half hours by car or bus from Bogotá.”[1]
Located away from major trade routes in a high altitude valley of semi-desert terrain, and with no mineral deposits nearby to exploit, the town has undergone little development in the last 400 years. As a consequence, it is one of the few towns in Colombia to have preserved much of its original colonial style and architecture: the streets and large central plaza are still paved with cobblestones, and many buildings date from the sixteenth century. This has resulted in Villa de Leyva becoming one of Colombia’s principal tourist attractions, and it was declared a National Monument on December 17, 1954 to preserve its architecture.[1] The town and the surrounding countryside, which contains several sites of interest, are popular weekend destinations for citizens of Bogota, and attract an increasing number of foreign tourists.
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Hacienda Coloma (coffe experience)
If you want to get up close and personal with the fascinating process of growing and producing Colombian coffee, you can do so just 90 minutes from Bogotá. At the Hacienda Coloma you will find much more than a beautiful landscape: you will experience the complete process of coffee production, from its seed to the essence of each sip.
When visiting Hacienda Coloma you will go through a historical and pleasant place where you will learn how to get a cup of coffee, from a grain.
The tour begins in the coffee seedbed, where the chapola is sown and cultivated. Next, you will go through a flowering coffee plantation of shade-grown Arabica coffee, where you can see many of the varieties available in Colombia. From there, it is transferred to the Beneficiadero, one of the most important and traditional places in the Colombian coffee process, where each coffee bean is washed, pulped, dried and hand picked. The journey continues in the Thresher and from there it moves to a final critical step in its quality: the Roasting of the coffee, slow and artisan process that gives the coffee its characteristic color and prints the final quality of the aroma and flavor of the coffee, which already made drink you will be able to taste at the end of the route.
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Parque Chicaque
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Parque Natural Chingaza
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La Chorrera & El Chiflon (water falls)
La Chorrera waterfall is a remarkable 590 metres high, making it the highest in Colombia and 60th highest in the world. More remarkably, it’s just one hour’s drive from Bogotá, plus a beautiful three-hour hike (there and back) through lush Andean cloud forest.
It drops dramatically over seven steps down the near-vertical escarpment of the eastern Andean cordillera – a sliver of silver against the jungle-clad limestone rock face – before disappearing into the matted green of the La Bolsa gully, from where it drains east to the Orinoco.
You can see the falls from along the main road from Bogotá to Choachí, but to really appreciate it you need to take a detour to Parque Aventura La Chorrera, a cooperative venture set up by 12 local land-owning families that provides camping, abseiling, horse-riding and other ecotourism activities in the area, as well as the hike to the falls.
The hiking trail is well marked with guide stations along the way, and even a restaurant and snack shop at the smaller El Chiflón waterfall (where you can also abseil). Much of the path follows the old colonial Camino Real, a rocky mule track that was once the main transport route between Bogotá and Villavicencio.
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Bogota Graffiti Tour
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