Villa de Leyva

Founded in 1572 and largely untouched by modernisation, Villa de Leyva is built around a plaza of roughly fourteen thousand square metres paved in rough cobbles, one of the largest town squares on the continent and startlingly empty in the early morning. Whitewashed walls, wooden balconies and green doors run down every street, and building regulations have kept it that way. The surrounding valley was a shallow sea in the Cretaceous, and the fossil record is exceptional: a complete marine reptile lies where it was found at El Fósil, and the Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas nearby works on the material. Add a Muisca solar observatory of standing stones, a desert-like landscape of blue pools, and one of Colombia's better weekend food scenes.

History

People lived in the area from the early days of settlement on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, the earliest traces found around the archaeoastronomical site of El Infiernito, and at the Spanish conquest the land was Muisca, ruled by the zaque of Hunza. The town was founded on 12 June 1572 and named after the first president of the New Kingdom of Granada, Andrés Díaz Venero de Leiva. Away from the main trade routes, in a high semi-desert valley with no minerals to mine, it changed little over the following 400 years, which kept its colonial streets and great cobbled plaza whole, and on 17 December 1954 it was declared a national monument (Wikipedia, Villa de Leyva).

Highlights

• Plaza Mayor - the vast cobbled square, best at dawn before the day visitors.
• El Fósil - a complete Cretaceous marine reptile displayed in situ.
• El Infiernito - a Muisca site of standing stones aligned to the solstices.
• Pozos Azules - striking blue pools in the dry landscape outside town.

When to go

The highland climate is mild all year; December to March is driest. Weekends bring Bogotá crowds and higher prices, so midweek is calmer. Nights are cold at 2,100 metres, which people underestimate.

Good to know

The cobbles are large, uneven and genuinely difficult in unsuitable shoes or with a wheelchair or pushchair. Weekend prices jump and the square fills with market stalls and crowds. Most outlying sites need a taxi, tuk-tuk or bicycle, and the fossil museums are modest in scale.

Nearby

Ráquira's pottery village is close; Bogotá is four hours south.

Key facts