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Few cities in the Americas carry their history as visibly as Cartagena de Indias. The old walled city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, rises from the Caribbean coast of Colombia's Bolívar department in a dense arrangement of colonial churches, merchant palaces, and fortified ramparts that have stood since the sixteenth century. Spain chose this harbour as one of its principal ports for the export of gold and silver from the New World, and the wealth that passed through here shaped everything from the street plan to the ornate ironwork balconies draped in bougainvillea that have become the city's most recognisable image.

The walls themselves, the Murallas, are the logical place to begin understanding Cartagena. Built and expanded over nearly two centuries in response to raids by English and French privateers, they encircle the old city in a circuit that visitors still walk today, looking out over the Caribbean on one side and the terracotta rooftops of El Centro on the other. The neighbourhood of Getsemaní, just beyond the walls, tells a different chapter of the same story. Once a working-class district where enslaved Africans and free people of colour lived apart from the colonial elite, it has its own distinct character, its plazas animated by local life and its walls covered in murals that speak to that layered past.