Villavicencio is also called "La Puerta al Llano", or "The Gateway to the Plains", due to its location on the historical path from the Colombian interior to the vast savannas that lie between the Andes range and the Amazon rainforest.

The German Conquistador Nikolaus Federmann reached the altiplano of Bogotá in 1536 by approaching it from the plains of Venezuela, a large unsettled area that is formed by the Orinoco basin.

The Llaneros, the inhabitants of the plains, are fierce horsemen who first fought for the Spanish royalists and then for the Venezuelan and Colombian rebels during the War of Independence.

[citation needed] During independence, they crossed the Cordillera Oriental with Simón Bolívar, and surprised the royalist army on the plains of Boyaca on the 6th of August, 1819, which cleared the way for the taking of an abandoned Santa Fe de Bogotá the next week.

In the 1840s, some farmers from Caqueza, a town on the eastern folds of Bogotá, started the modest settlement of Gramalote, which would officially become the parish of Villavicencio in 1855.

Vaccines, a mule road, and the availability of vast areas of free land, drove new colonizers to continue the settlement of Villavicencio.

In 1948, large landowners expelled many farmers out of their lands across the country, explained in part by the momentum of the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a popular Liberal politician.

As the fighting between the government and the Llanero guerrillas was out of control, a military coup in June 1953, took Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to power who immediately negotiated a cease fire and amnesty for the insurgents.

East of Villavo they point towards Apiay, Puerto Lopez and the fluvial port of Orocue on the Meta river, a strong affluent of the Orinoco.

In recent years the city has achieved an economic development strengthened by the trade sector, thanks to the dynamics generated by the roads that channel to the interior and the center of the country the agricultural and agro-industrial industry of the Llano, as well as the products entering the region from different parts of Colombia.

As the hub city of the Eastern Plains, Villavicencio is the main urban university center of the region to which young people from neighboring departments come.

The Colombian Football Federation announced that Villavicencio was to have been one of the venue cities to host the 2016 FIFA Futsal World Cup, however it was replaced by Medellín.

Due to the growing interest in tourism in the region, the highways have been modernized and improved, shortening the driving time and distance to the capital Bogotá.

In preparation to meet this demand, tourism development plans and strategies are implemented by the departmental and municipal governments, as well as the Cotelco branch.

Concurso mundial de la Mujer Vaquera Occurring annually in Las Malocas Park, participants demonstrate their skills in llano work and rodeo, and where llanera music is also performed by top musicians of this Colombian-Venezuelan genre.

The place pays tribute to the author of The Vortex, while the ax refers to the early settlers that used this tool to open the trails in Meta and change the land.

[13] Villavicencio shares the condition of land of immigrants with the region of the Eastern Plains of Colombia; from its foundation to the present, people from the interior of the country and the coasts have sought and found in the city the conditions and the receptivity to establish themselves; At the same time, they have contributed to forge a mestizo culture in which, nevertheless, they struggle to impose a stronger relationship with the region, a bond of identity with the llanera culture.

Mamona, coleo, cockfighting, joropo, dance, legends, myth, the renewed and popularized use of the poncho, among others are currently struggling not to disappear before the thrust of urban or modern life.