CARTAGENA: COLOMBIAN DESTINATION OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

BOCA GRANDE - CARTAGENA

Cartagena de Indias is a fantastic city that holds the secrets of history in its walls and balconies, in its buildings and its narrow stone paths.

The most famous beach in Cartagena de Indias is the Boca Grande is located on the peninsula south of the historic center. The quieter months on the Caribbean Sea are from March to November, and December are hectic to February due to sea currents. However, the temperature during the month is excellent agitation.

The beach has golden sand and hotels are plentiful as conveniently located to all tastes. The neighborhood is full of Bocagrande restaurants and bars with a busy avenue, Avenida San Martin. In the background is Bocagrande Laguito, starting from the famous Caribbean hotel and ends at a point of land to the bay is known as Castillogrande, who knows his strong finish in Santa Cruz, which is now in ruins. Right next to the bay, people can use a road along the beach and is often used to make trips.

HISTORY

Cartagena de Indias is a city from its beginnings to today has greatly influenced the events in Colombia. In pre-Columbian Indians inhabited coasts Caribbean race warriors that would give more problems to a colonizing expedition that dared to disembark in its beaches.

It was now the honor of founding the Spaniard Don Pedro de Heredia, on June 1, 1533, under the name of "Cartagena de Poniente", to distinguish it from "Cartagena de Levante" in Spain, both with similar bays.

The new city would be targeted by the greed of English and French invaders, and their quality is that slave trade and commercial port made it very appealing to foreigners. Therefore their protection and defense were more urgent, beginning in the sixteenth century with the Fort Boqueron (where today stands the Fort of Pastelillo). Then came little by little, the various fortifications that surround the city according to the demands and the evolution of military art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But why not save the city from devastating invasions as Baron de Pointis in 1697, which left it in ruins.

In 1610 the first friars arrive Sentencing Court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to extend its power to rebuke and surveillance until the time of Independence.

Cartagena de Indias was sometimes viceroys headquarters, as Don Sebastian de Eslava, who ruled for almost ten years in a row, replacing Santa Fe as the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada.

On November 11, 1811 signed the Act of Absolute Independence from Spain, beginning with this 10 long years to achieve full emancipation. Of the many blockades and sieges suffered the Villa de Heredia, include the tax by Pablo Morillo, The Peacemaker, in 1815, which aimed to restore this important location for the Spanish Crown. "Cartagena de Indias, Heroic City" was the title he would win after enduring more than three months of intense siege.

In the Republican era the city entered a long period of stagnation due to the loss of strategic and commercial interest. Can Rafael Núñez, Cartagena during this time of "recession" of Cartagena de Indias, was elected President four times, directing the destiny of the nation from the Heroic, as in Cologne some viceroys did.

The rebirth of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia as a crucial city is given into the twentieth century with the revival of its economy, when its history and legends are only memories of the glorious past of a tourist city that receives the XXI century full of hopes and dreams for the future.

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