Colourful walls and the Rosario Islands. Here is when to go, what a day costs on site and what to see, then Okela composes your itinerary hour by hour.

Compose my trip to CartagenaSee Cartagena in Okela

When to visit Cartagena

Best months: January, February, March, April and December.

What to see in Cartagena

1. Ville fortifiée (remparts)
   These stone ramparts ring the old town and were built by the Spanish to defend the port against pirates and privateers.
2. Getsemaní
   Getsemaní is Cartagena's former working-class neighborhood, built outside the city walls, and it has kept a neighborly everyday life that the tourist-heavy old town has partly lost.
3. Castillo San Felipe de Barajas
   Standing on Cerro San Lázaro, the fortress commands the city, the bay and the approaches by land, and within minutes you see why it was so hard to capture.
4. Îles du Rosaire (excursion)
   A short boat ride from Cartagena, this archipelago of small coral islands has clear water that shifts from turquoise to deep blue, and a stillness that contrasts with the city.
5. Plaza Santo Domingo
   This square in the historic centre is one of the liveliest in the old town, framed by colonial facades, café terraces and the plain church of Santo Domingo on one side.
6. Palais de l'Inquisition
   This eighteenth-century colonial building on Plaza Bolívar housed the Inquisition tribunal for a large part of South America.
7. Café del Mar (remparts)
   Café del Mar was the open-air bar on the Santo Domingo bastion, facing the Caribbean, and for years it was the place to watch the sunset from the city walls.
8. Playa Blanca (Barú)
   This is where you go from Cartagena for a proper day with your feet in the water: a long ribbon of pale sand, calm shallow sea, and palm trees and thatched huts along the edge.

A sample itinerary for Cartagena, three days

Composed by Okela from the places in its database, with times. Yours takes your dates, pace and group into account.

Budget

Expect about €88 per person per day on site (accommodation, meals, transport and visits), depending on the comfort you choose. Okela shows the price of every step of your itinerary.

My Cartagena itinerary, hour by hour

More destinations: Colombia

Photo: Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.