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. The banana zone around it is the country Garcia Marquez reworked 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.

History

Before the Spanish, the Chimila people lived here, in a village called Pongueyca, and the town's founding is disputed: it is thought to have begun at today's Pueblo Viejo, where the friar Tomás Ortiz set up a parish in 1529 that later burned. It was refounded by Fernando de Mier y Guerra as Villa de San Juan Bautista de la Ciénaga, and in 2012 it became the first heritage town, Pueblo Patrimonio, of the Magdalena department (Wikipedia, Ciénaga, Magdalena).

Highlights

• Republican-era architecture - built on banana money, largely intact.
• The town square - the heart of the Republican-era centre.
• 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.

Good to know

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.

Key facts