History of Cartagena, Colombia

The Caribbean region, particularly in the area from the Sinú River delta to the Cartagena de Indias bay, appears to be the first documented human community in today's Colombia: the Puerto Hormiga Culture.

The primary reason for the proliferation of primitive societies in this area is the relative mildness of climate and the abundance of wildlife which through continuous hunting allowed the inhabitants a comfortable life.

[3][4][5] In today's villages of Maria La Baja, Sincerín, El Viso and Mahates and Rotinet, there have also been discoveries of the remains of culturally organized societies through the excavation of maloka-type buildings, which are directly related to the early Puerto Hormiga settlements.

The rise of a much more developed culture, the Monsú, who lived at the end of the Dique Canal, near today's Cartagena neighborhoods Pasacaballos and Ciénaga Honda at the northernmost part of Barú Island.

[6] The ethnologists who discovered Monsú, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff and his wife Alicia Dussan, found an interesting artificial mound created by them consisting in vases and rests of skeletons.

These tribes, though physically and administratively separated, shared common architecture, such as hut structures consisting of circular rooms with tall roofs inside wooden palisades.

Bastidas explored the coast and discovered the Magdalena River delta in his first journey from Guajira to the south in 1527, trip that ended in the Urabá gulf, seat of the failed first settlements.

While Desjean only asked for 250,000 Spanish reales in ransom, Jean du Casse stayed a few months later and dishonored the promise of the Baron of respecting the churches and holy places and left them with nothing.

During the 17th century, the Spanish Crown hired the services of prominent European military engineers to carry out the construction of fortresses, which are nowadays one of Cartagena's clearest signs of identity.

It was built during the Governorship of Pedro Zapata de Mendoza, Marquis of Barajas, and was constructed to repel land attacks, equipped with sentry boxes, buildings for food and weapons storage, tunnels.

The first slaves arrived with Pedro de Heredia and they worked as cane cutters to open roads, in the desecration of tombs of the aboriginal population of Sinú, and in the construction of buildings and fortresses.

The agents of the Portuguese company Cacheu distributed human 'cargos' from Cartagena for mine exploitation in Venezuela, the West Indies, the Nuevo Reino de Granada and the Viceroyalty of Perú.

On 5 February 1610, the Catholic Monarchs established from Spain the Inquisition Holy Office Court in Cartagena de Indias by a Royal Decree issued by King Philip II.

The reconstruction after the Raid on Cartagena (1697) was initially slow, but with the ending of the War of the Spanish Succession around 1711 and the competent administration of D. Juan Diaz de Torrezar Pimienta the walls were rebuilt, the forts reorganized and restored and the public services and buildings reopened.

During the reign of Philip V of Spain the city had many new public works starting or ending like the new fort of San Fernando, the Hospital of the Obra Pía and the full paving of all the streets and the opening of new roads.

These good times of steady progress and advance of the second half of the 18th century came into an abrupt end in 1808, with the general crisis of the Spanish Empire, embodied in the Mutiny of Aranjuez, with all its consequences.

According to the chronists descriptions the huts of the prehistoric inhabitants of the actual city may looked very similar to these Taino culture huts in Cuba
This is how a woman from the Karib Culture may have dressed
Alonso de Ojeda passed through the bay in 1505 but decided to continue to Uraba.
Pedro de Heredia founder of the city and explorer of its hinterland
Juan de la Cosa , (1460 - killed by Indians in 1509), traveled with De Heredia to the area, and died in the near town of Turbaco in a battle, his office was to make the maps of the expedition due to his expertise after being the first cartographer of America.
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada , (1495 - Bogotá now, Colombia, 1579), was the Founder of Bogotá , 1537, the actual capital of Colombia, and Governor of the City after the death in a shipwreck, in 1554, of Pedro de Heredia
Sunset over Cartagena Harbor as seen from La Popa
Francis Drake entered in the city after the failure of his uncle Hawkins and sacked the nascent colony
Privateer John Hawkins failed to capture the city in 1568
Jean Baptiste du Casse and his brigands damaged the military invasion of New Granada of Louis XIV under the Baron of Pointis by ravaging the city and turning into pirates .
King of France, Louis XIV , deceased 1715, dreamed with taking over the city and invade the New Granada territories, now Colombia, but failed.
Map of the city recently established and without walls. c. 1550
Cartagena de Indias San Agustín Street
A part of the 16th and 17th century Fortress of San Felipe de Barajas, Cartagena de Indias, now a city of Colombia
Crates and crates of these Spanish reales dwelled in Cartagena de Indias to be distributed throughout the empire.
The pro-trade, administrative reforms and deregulation economic policies of the new Bourbon Dynasty in Spain stimulated the economic growth and consolidation of the Spanish America . Here, the first Bourbon Spanish monarch, Philip V .
Juan Díaz de Torrezar Pimienta as governor was the mastermind of the reconstruction of the city after the destruction of 1697.
Blas de Lezo the Spanish sea farer, with only one eye, one leg and one hand, was one of the military leaders that defended the city from Admiral Vernon in 1741
The final serious attempt to take the city and invade New Granada was made by Edward Vernon , who failed in one of the biggest military expeditions ever made there
José Celestino Mutis lived in the city and collected and classified many plants
Alexander Von Humboldt stayed in the city in the early 1800s together with French naturalist Bonpland and saw the closure of the Silver Age