Cienaga

Cienaga grew wealthy on bananas in the early twentieth century when the United Fruit Company operated across this plain, and the money produced a centre of Republican-era buildings - the Palacio Municipal, the church, and a stock of houses with high ceilings, arcades and decorative ironwork, unusually intact for the region. In December 1928 workers striking against the company were fired on by the Colombian army in the town square; the death toll has never been established and estimates range enormously, and the episode became one of the defining events of the period, reworked by Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta, the country's largest coastal lagoon and a biosphere reserve, lies immediately west.

What you actually see

• Republican-era architecture - built on banana money, largely intact.
• The 1928 strike square - where the shooting happened.
• The Cienaga Grande - the largest coastal lagoon in Colombia.
• The plain United Fruit worked - across the region.

When to go

December to April. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The death toll in 1928 is genuinely unknown and contested - accounts vary by orders of magnitude. The town is poor and buildings are in mixed condition. Heat and humidity are heavy. Tourist services are limited.

Nearby

Nueva Venecia is in the lagoon; Santa Marta is east.