Christmas at la Plaza de la Catedral, Santa Marta, North East Cartagena

Christmas at la Plaza de la Catedral, Santa Marta, North East Cartagena

The catedral of Santa Marta is the the oldest church founded in Colombia. However, it was not entirely completed shortly before the year 1800. In the year 1830, the great liberator of major parts of South America, Simón Bolívar (*24. July 1783 in Caracas), was buried here after he died in Santa Marta on 17. December 1830 on nearby hacienda Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino (owned by his supporter Joaquin de Mier), before - in 1842 - he was finally buried in Caracas.
Santa Marta is the oldest Spanish settlement in what is now Colombia, founded in 1525 by Rodrigo de Bastidas in front of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Before the rise of Cartagena, Jiménez de Quesada started from Santa Marta in 1536 and finally founded Bogotá in 1538.
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the highest coastal range of the world with the Pico Cristóbal Colón and the Pico Simón Bolívar (both 5770 m), only about 45 km from the Caribbean coast. Santa Marta is the gateway to the famous Parque Nacional Nacional Tayrona with beautiful beaches and archeological findings of the long extict Tairona, indigenous people, who formed a highly developed local civilization with major settlements like Pueblito and Ciudad Perdida 1000 years before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1499.