A day of bells: a Sunday in Cartagena

On Sunday, Cartagena wakes up slowly. Bells call to mass over nearly empty streets, doorways open halfway and the air still carries some of the night's cool. It's the best day to discover the Old City at an easy pace, and the plan is simple: eat well and walk.

A city of bells

Cartagena has always been a city of bells. In 1610 a young Jesuit, Pedro Claver, arrived from Spain and spent nearly forty years at the port caring for the enslaved Africans who came off the ships; he died here in 1654 and lies in the church that bears his name, beside Plaza San Pedro. That same year, 1610, by decree of Philip III, the Tribunal of the Inquisition was established in the city; its palace, with a baroque doorway, still stands on Plaza de Bolívar and is now the Museo Histórico de Cartagena.

Sunday is the best day for that other walk, the walk through memory. With fewer cars and less hurry, the walled city lets itself be read: coats of arms over doorways, the old names of the streets, balconies that have been watching the neighbours across the way for centuries. Here, history isn't behind glass; it's out in the street.

I · Morning

Coffee first

Start with specialty coffee in the Old City; we keep a list in our café guide. For brunch, Bocagrande is a few minutes away.

II · Midday

A lunch without a clock

On Sundays, Kanibal and SLVJ open from 11 am to 7 pm. It's the day for a lunch without a clock: fire at Kanibal or the SLVJ sushi bar, and a long sobremesa.

A Cartagena Sunday lunch has its classics. Posta negra cartagenera, beef bathed in a dark, sweet sauce, is the dish for special occasions. Coconut rice, which the city claims as its own, goes with fried fish all along the coast. These are big-pot, whole-family dishes, the kind that ask for a long table and nobody watching the clock.

Best for a long table with family or friends, and a sobremesa that stretches into the afternoon.

Here, history isn't behind glass; it's out in the street.

III · Afternoon

Between the clock and the walls

When the heat eases, walk to the city walls for sunset or take an electric carriage through the plazas.

Walk in through the Clock Tower, the main gate of the walled city, and you reach Plaza de los Coches. In colonial times it was a merchants' square and also a slave market; today, under its arches, the Portal de los Dulces sells cocadas, alegrías made with panela, coconut and millet, and little tamarind balls. Few squares tell the bitter and the sweet of this city so well.

Epilogue

Sunday, every day

Soon, La Domenica will be our Sunday world: coffee when you wake, pizza for a very long lunch and aperitivo as the afternoon fades.