A Long Weekend in Old Cartagena: Offbeat
Three days covers Old Cartagena’s walled-city loop plus a full evening in Getsemani: Day 1 orientation and a quiet sunset wall, Day 2 La Popa, the Palace of the Inquisition and Castillo San Felipe, Day 3 Getsemani’s street art and its unmarked rooftop bars. The 2 day version drops Getsemani’s nightlife if you’re tighter on time, and the 4 day version adds a San Basilio de Palenque day trip.
Book these before you go
- Book a walled city walking tour , better with a guide who knows which bastion beats Cafe del Mar
- Compare Old City and Getsemani rates before you book, rooms fill fast in dry season
- Book Castillo San Felipe tickets to skip the gate line in peak hours
| Day | Focus | Travel time | Daily cost (COP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Walled city, Las Bovedas, quiet sunset wall | Walkable, no transfers | ~120,000-180,000 |
| 2 | La Popa, Palace of Inquisition, Castillo San Felipe | Taxi to La Popa ~15 min, fort ~10 min | ~150,000-220,000 |
| 3 | Getsemani street art, slave-trade history, rooftop bars | Walkable from the Old City | ~130,000-200,000 |
Day 1: The Walled City, Las Bovedas and a Sunset Without the Crowd
Land at Rafael Nunez International (CTG), 15-20 minutes from the walls, and take the fixed-rate kiosk taxi, roughly 20,000-30,000 COP, to a hotel inside the walls or in Getsemani. Walk the Old City’s plazas at a pace the heat allows, cathedral, Plaza Bolivar, then Las Bovedas, the row of arched vaults built into the walls. They read as a souvenir market now, but they started as munitions storage and later a dungeon, a detail worth knowing before you start bargaining over hammocks. As evening cools things, skip Cafe del Mar’s packed rooftop and walk 200 meters further along the same wall, same sunset, a street beer instead of a bar tab. Finish with dinner in Getsemani, a first taste of the street art you’ll walk properly on Day 3.
Day 2: La Popa’s Morning View, the Inquisition’s Darker Rooms, San Felipe at Last Light
Start early at Convento de la Popa, the hilltop 17th-century monastery, roughly 4,500-11,000 COP (sources disagree, confirm at the gate). Morning light and cooler air beat the standard late-afternoon crowd. Back in the walls by midday, visit the Palace of the Inquisition next to Parque Bolivar, roughly 19,000-24,000 COP, where the lower rooms hold the actual instruments the Spanish Inquisition’s Cartagena tribunal used. Save Castillo San Felipe de Barajas for late afternoon, entrance a disputed 38,000-50,000 COP, since the fort has almost no shade and midday heat there is punishing.
Day 3: Getsemani’s Street Art, Sober History and Unmarked Rooftop Bars
Getsemani’s murals now cover entire streets, but the scene traces to Calle Sierpe, where the first pieces appeared before the annual Cartagena Urban Culture Festival, running since 2013, built out the neighborhood’s identity-driven mural style. Walk it slowly in the morning before the heat, then spend an hour with the honest version of why this neighborhood, and the walls above it, exist: Cartagena held Spain’s monopoly on the slave trade into Spanish South America for two centuries, an estimated 120,000-plus enslaved Africans passed through this port, and Getsemani was historically home to the city’s Afro-Cartagenero working class. A Four Seasons opened here on 2 April 2026, a real marker of how fast the neighborhood is gentrifying. At night, skip the main plaza bars for one of Getsemani’s unmarked rooftop spots, ask your hotel concierge which door to knock on, since these change faster than any list can track.