The city of beautiful things: a guide to shopping in Cartagena

There is an hour in Cartagena, just before noon, when the light turns white and the streets empty out. The ochre, yellow and indigo façades throw back the heat, bougainvillea spills from the wooden balconies, and behind every half-open door you can sense a shaded courtyard. It is the best hour to walk into a shop. Not to buy in a hurry, but to do what this city has done for nearly five centuries: look slowly at beautiful things that have come from far away, and keep one.

A port made for desire

Cartagena wasn't born to be beautiful; it was born to trade. Pedro de Heredia founded it in 1533 on a bay that soon became the gateway to the Americas. Gold, silver and emeralds left here for Seville, and silks, wines and the objects Creole families displayed in their drawing rooms came in. So much wealth drew pirates (Francis Drake sacked the city in 1586), and the answer was made of stone: the walls that still embrace it, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.

Today's shops occupy those merchants' houses, on streets that keep the names of their day. Shopping here is, at heart, carrying on the same conversation: that of a city that has always known how to recognise what is worth having.

Shopping in the old city is carrying on a conversation that began with the galleons.

The hands that came before

Long before the Spanish arrived, the Zenú people of the Colombian Caribbean worked gold with a finesse that still stops people in front of museum cases. Up the Magdalena River, in Mompox, goldsmiths still make filigree: threads of silver and gold so fine the jewellery looks like lace. That patience of Colombian hands never disappeared; it changed materials. It's in a crochet knit, in a dress cut to the measure of the heat, in a piece of furniture restored part by part.

The Cartagena poet Luis Carlos López, in his sonnet "A mi ciudad nativa", compared the city to a pair of old shoes: loved with the stubborn affection of habit. The city answered with a pair of bronze boots that today rest at the foot of the San Felipe castle. This guide is written with that same affection. It goes from shop to shop, following the day, but above all it goes from story to story.

I · Morning

Santo Domingo, the heart of the city

Plaza Santo Domingo is where Cartagena sits down to look at itself. The church of Santo Domingo, one of the city's oldest, presides over it, and among the café tables lies Fernando Botero's Gertrudis, a naked, generous bronze woman everyone touches for luck. Around her, within a few blocks, is the best of Colombian design.

St Dom

The concept store that put Cartagena on the design map. It opened in 2014 in a colonial house with a patio and garden, founded by Alex Srour and Maya Memovic, the founders of the beachwear label Azulu. The New York Times, Forbes and Vogue have all covered it since.

Walking in is like reading a map of Latin America: fashion, jewellery, books, art and homeware, from established names like Johanna Ortiz and Amelia Toro to designers you won't find anywhere else.

Take home a Colombian designer dress, a handmade jewel or a design book.

Johanna Ortiz

The most coveted Colombian designer abroad founded her label in Cali in 2003 and is now sold at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Moda Operandi. She calls Cartagena her second home, and it shows: her ruffles, full sleeves and tropical prints look cut for this city's nights.

With Lauren Santo Domingo she published Cartagena Grace with Assouline, a portrait of the city through their eyes. Her boutique is on Plaza Santo Domingo.

Take home a long silk or linen dress for dinner nights.

Silvia Tcherassi

Born on the shores of the Colombian Caribbean, she started as an interior designer and ended up in fashion: her collections have shown on the official calendars of Paris and Milan fashion weeks. The interior designer is still there: every garment is conceived like a space.

Her boutique in the walled city is small and full of light, with what she does best: light whites, fabrics that breathe, silhouettes made for the heat.

Take home a white dress that works from breakfast to dinner.

II · Midday

San Pedro and the Arzobispado

Plaza San Pedro is named after Peter Claver, the Jesuit who spent nearly forty years going down to the port to meet the enslaved Africans arriving on the ships, to tend and baptise them. He called himself "the slave of the slaves forever". His church and cloister are still there, and his body lies beneath the altar. It is the hardest side of Cartagena's history, and also the one that explains much of its music, its cooking and its way of being in the world.

Soloio

Spanish menswear founded in 1994, with linen as its signature and 70% of its pieces made in Italy. It arrived in Cartagena in 2016 and now has two shops in the old city: by Plaza San Pedro and on Calle del Arzobispado.

It's relaxed Mediterranean elegance brought to the Caribbean: shirts, trousers and shorts in natural fabrics that stand up to the heat, plus swimwear in its Soloio Mare line.

Take home a linen shirt in a light colour.

The Relicka

A Cartagena label with a story worth telling: all its clothing is 100% hand-woven by Colombian women who head their households. It is the inheritance of those Zenú and Mompox hands, brought up to date.

It works with everything from chunky knits to soft fabrics and crochet, and its Caribeña collection was born for this climate: fresh, breathable pieces that look nothing like mass production.

Take home a crochet piece for the beach or the night.

Bahama Mama

Swimwear and beachwear made in Cartagena since 2014, inspired by the Colombian Caribbean. Its designers, Nicole Acosta and Rocío Borré, work with recycled fabrics, cotton, linen and eco-friendly digital printing, and everything is designed and made in Colombia.

In 2022 it showed at Miami Swim Week alongside other Colombian labels: the Caribbean, exported with its own accent.

Take home a printed swimsuit for a day in Barú or the Rosario Islands.

III · Afternoon

Santa Clara and San Diego

Towards the north of the walled city, the San Diego neighbourhood grows quieter. Here stands the old convent of the Poor Clares, built in the early seventeenth century and now the Sofitel Legend Santa Clara hotel. In 1949 a young reporter named Gabriel García Márquez watched its crypts being emptied, and from one of the tombs came a copper-coloured mane of hair more than twenty-two metres long. That image became Of Love and Other Demons, the story of Sierva María, the girl raised among slaves who ended up locked away in this very convent.

Lina Cantillo

The Barranquilla designer has been dressing men for more than twenty years and is one of the most recognised voices in Colombian menswear, with shows at Colombiamoda and Bogotá Fashion Week.

Her shop is inside the hotel, by the pool: printed shirts, guayaberas, linen and resort pieces made with real craft, for the man who wants to look sharp without looking like a tourist.

Take home a guayabera for the night at SLVJ.

IV · For the home

Objects with a memory

In a city where many houses are more than three centuries old, objects aren't decoration: they're memory. The mahogany furniture, ironwork and church pieces that arrived on the galleons, or were made here from Caribbean woods, keep turning up in the houses of the old city. Some of them end up in shops like these.

Casa Chiqui

Cartagena's most iconic home store, on Calle de la Universidad. Chiqui de Echavarría opened it in a 1930s warehouse she restored herself, and it is almost a cabinet of travels: furniture and objects she has picked from Bali to Morocco and South America, alongside her own line of jewellery, bags and accessories made by Colombian artisans.

Take home an object that tells a journey, or a jewel from her own line.

Atticca

Colonial antiques on Calle del Cuartel, in the heart of the old city: furniture, objects and pieces from the same era as the walled city's houses. It's the place for anyone after something no one else will have, with Cartagena's history included.

Take home a small piece that fits in your suitcase and carries three centuries.

Epilogue

As the afternoon fades

When the shops close, the city changes its skin. Under the Portal de los Dulces, once the Arcade of the Scribes, Florentino Ariza wrote love letters for hire in Love in the Time of Cholera, and the same coconut sweets are still sold there today. It's the hour to drop the bags, take a shower and go out again: an aperitivo at La Domenica, dinner at Kanibal or SLVJ. Night in Cartagena starts late and ends later. And if you want to keep shopping, the second part of this guide, The craft of beauty, runs from Las Bóvedas to La Serrezuela.