Sonson

Sonson was founded in 1800 and became one of the centres from which Antioquian settlers pushed south into what is now the coffee region - the colonisation that produced Manizales, Pereira and the towns of Caldas and Quindio started substantially from towns like this one. It sits at around 2,500 metres on a plateau, which makes it cold. An earthquake in July 1962 destroyed the cathedral and damaged much of the centre; the church was rebuilt and the town carries both surviving colonial fabric and mid-century replacement side by side. A museum covers the settler period and the earthquake. Paramo and cloud forest rise above the town, and the Paramo de Sonson is a source area for several rivers.

History

José Joaquín Ruiz y Zapata, village judge of Arma de Rionegro, founded the town on 4 August 1800 with seventy-seven people, as San José de Ezpeleta de Sonsón, after Saint Joseph and the viceroy Ezpeleta. In the first decades of the 19th century it became the supply centre for the colonisation of the west, an important financial and trading town of Antioquia and for several years the department's second city, and every August it holds its Festival of the Corn (Wikipedia, Sonsón).

The main sights

• A settler town of 1800 - a starting point for the southern colonisation.
• Earthquake damage and rebuilding - the 1962 shock and its replacements.
• A cold plateau at 2,500 metres - unlike the coffee country below.
• Paramo above the town - source of several rivers.

When to go

Year round; it is cold and often wet. Half a day.

Things to know

It is genuinely cold and rainy - not the warm Antioquia visitors expect. The 1962 earthquake removed much of the old centre. Roads from Medellin are winding. It is off the tourist circuit.

Nearby

La Ceja is north-west; the Caldas coffee towns are south.

Key facts