Trips to Colombia

TRIPS TO COLOMBIA: POPAYÁN

Founder: Sebastián de Belalcazar.

Date of Foundation: 13 of January of 1537

Altitude: 1737 ms

Geographic location: The city of Popayán is the capital of the Department of the Cauca. It is located 02º 26 ' 39 '' of North latitude and 76º 37 ' 17” of west longitude.

Average temperature: 19, 80 Cs.

Precipitation: 1,941 mm.

Population: 233,100 inhabitants

Distance to the Capital of the Republic: 702 Kilometers.


Popayán, capital of the department of the Cauca, is well-known as the “white city” and is distinguished for being an architectonic jewel of the Colony. Historical-architectonic patrimony is conserved as and is one of the most traditional cities of Colombia, although a strong earthquake destroyed good part of its constructions in 1983.

Between its attractiveness they excel the Chapel of Bethlehem, the Hermitage, the temples of San Francisco, the Carmen, the Incarnation, Santo Domingo and San jOse and the convent and the church of San Agustín. Also the House Calda, the Museum stand out Martinez, the Valencia House, the Negret House and the University of the Cauca.
The Museum of Religious Art conserve colonial pieces of great value. Other places of interest are the Tower of the Clock, the Bridge of the Calvary, the Nose of Tulcán, and the Hotel Monastery, that works in which was an old franciscan monastery.

This religious city par excellence is famous by the celebration of the Easter; also the Festival of Religious Music is carried out that congregates in the temples musical, national and foreign groups.

Popayán was a very important city in the Virreinato of New Granada.

Here the owners of the Gold mines on Barbecues and Choco lived, who invested to their wealth in cattle properties and great large houses, filling the city of enormous temples and brought images of Spain; thus the splendor is explained that this city lived during the colonial time and the first times of the Republic.

The operation of the Gold mines produced a negative effect in the native population, that added to the diseases that the Spanish brought to the new world, they gave like result, the extermination of a 86% of the population that originally inhabited these earth.