A cup before the sun: specialty coffee in Cartagena's Old City

Mornings in the walled city have an exact moment. The streets are still cool, someone is watering the plants on a balcony, a bell rings in the distance and the light is only beginning to warm the façades. By ten, the sun is in charge. Colombia is coffee country, and in Cartagena it's getting easier to drink specialty coffee without leaving the walls. These are the places we send our guests when they ask where to start the day.

From the Orinoco to the walled city

Coffee reached these lands with the Jesuits. Its first written mention in what was then New Granada is credited to the missionary José Gumilla, who described it growing in the missions of the eastern plains in El Orinoco ilustrado, published in the eighteenth century. The great coffee culture came later: in the second half of the nineteenth century, as settlers from Antioquia moved into the mountains, coffee became the economy, the landscape and the identity of a whole region, and UNESCO named that Coffee Cultural Landscape a World Heritage Site in 2011.

Cartagena is far from those mountains, but coffee belongs to its mornings. Drink it early, while the walled city seems to belong to whoever gets up first.

I · Early

In the shade of the Cathedral

Época Café

On Calle del Arzobispado, steps from the Cathedral, Época is an all-day specialty café. It has the full espresso menu (americano, espresso, latte, flat white, macchiato), breakfasts and plates to linger over, and sells whole beans from different origins to take home. One of the best ways to start a morning in the Old City.

Take home whole beans from a Colombian origin.

II · Mid-morning

A city of writers

In May 1948 a law student named Gabriel García Márquez published his first column, "Punto y aparte", in the newspaper El Universal. It was Manuel Zapata Olivella who brought him to the paper: a doctor and writer from the coast who would later write Changó, el gran putas (1983), one of the great novels of the African diaspora in the Americas. That conversation between the city, the Caribbean and literature lives on in shelves like Ábaco's.

Ábaco Libros y Café

A bookshop, café and gallery in a colonial house where Calle de la Iglesia meets Calle de la Mantilla. Among shelves of Cartagena history and a section devoted to García Márquez, you drink Colombian coffee with something sweet.

Best for a long afternoon pause when the sun is at its strongest.

Drink it early, while the walled city seems to belong to whoever gets up first.

III · Santo Domingo

The tower the devil bent

Plaza Santo Domingo has a legend of its own. Its church, considered the oldest in the city, has a visibly crooked bell tower; locals say the devil tried to knock it down one night and only managed to bend it. A few steps away rests Gertrudis, the bronze woman Fernando Botero brought from Florence and gave to the city in 2000.

Café San Alberto

On Plaza Santo Domingo, two blocks from our door, this café from a Colombian coffee estate has one of the most complete brew-method menus in town, bookable coffee tastings and a shop to take the beans home.

Don't miss a coffee tasting, booked ahead.

IV · Beyond the walls

Weekend brunch

Ely Café

For brunch, step just outside the walls: Ely Café in Bocagrande is a Cartagena classic for a long weekend breakfast.

Epilogue

Before you head home

When the sun drops, walk along the wall to Las Bóvedas: 23 vaults and 47 arches built in the late eighteenth century by the engineer Antonio de Arévalo, the last great colonial work inside the walls. They were built as military storerooms and served as prison cells in the nineteenth century; today they hold craft shops. It's the best place to watch the afternoon turn into night over the sea.