The Gold Museum in Bogotá holds around 55,000 pieces of pre-Hispanic goldwork, the largest such collection anywhere. One small object in it is the reason Europeans spent two centuries looking for a city that never existed.
The Muisca raft is a cast gold figure about twenty centimetres across, made somewhere between 600 and 1600 AD, showing a chief standing on a raft surrounded by attendants. It depicts an actual ceremony: a new Muisca ruler was covered in gold dust and rowed out onto Lake Guatavita, where he and his people threw gold and emeralds into the water as an offering, and then he washed the dust off in the lake.
Spanish accounts of el hombre dorado — the gilded man — became El Dorado, and the gilded man became a golden city, and expeditions died looking for it across a continent. The ceremony was real, the city was not, and the object showing it was found in a cave south of Bogotá in 1969 by three farmers.
The Sunday roads
Every Sunday and public holiday since 1974, Bogotá closes around 120 kilometres of main roads to motor traffic from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. The Ciclovía draws something in the region of a million and a half people who cycle, run, skate and walk down the middle of avenues that carry six lanes of cars the rest of the week.
It has been copied in dozens of cities from Mexico City to Los Angeles. Bogotá did it first, and at a scale nobody else has matched.
Altitude and geography
Bogotá sits at about 2,640 metres on a high plateau in the eastern Andes, making it among the highest large capitals on earth. Visitors arriving from sea level should take the first day gently, and the coca tea offered in hotels is a mild help rather than a cure.
The city runs north to south along the plateau with mountains on the east side, which is why orientation here is simple: the hills are always east.
La Candelaria is the colonial old town with the Gold Museum, the Botero donation and the universities.
Chapinero and Zona G hold the restaurants.
Usaquén, north, is a former village absorbed by the city with a Sunday flea market.
The eight below are grouped that way.
The north and Zona G
The restaurant districts.
Four Seasons Hotel Casa Medina Bogotá occupies a 1946 building declared a national monument, with Moorish arches, a courtyard and hand-carved timber, in the middle of the restaurant quarter. It is the best hotel in Colombia.
Four Seasons Hotel Casa Medina Bogotá
Zona G · 5★ · $$$
A 1946 national monument with Moorish arches and carved timber
Check availabilityFour Seasons Hotel Bogotá sits in the financial district with a spa, a pool and the most complete facilities in the city.
Four Seasons Hotel Bogotá
Financial district · 5★ · $$$
A spa and pool with the city's fullest facilities
Check availabilityW Bogotá occupies a building near the Zona Rosa with a design-led interior, a rooftop and a livelier tone.
W Bogotá
Usaquén · 5★ · $$$
A design-led interior with a rooftop and a livelier tone
Check availabilityCasa Legado sits in a residential street with a handful of rooms, a garden and a house rather than hotel feel.
Sofitel Bogotá Victoria Regia occupies a position in the north with a rooftop pool, a spa and contemporary rooms.
Sofitel Bogotá Victoria Regia
Zona Rosa · 5★ · $$
A rooftop pool and spa with contemporary rooms
Check availabilityHotel B3 Virrey sits near Parque 93 with reliable rooms and the best value in the good districts.
La Candelaria
The colonial centre.
Hotel de la Ópera occupies a nineteenth-century building on the Plaza de Bolívar, opposite the cathedral, with a spa and the Gold Museum a short walk away.
Hotel de la Ópera
La Candelaria · 4★ · $$
On the Plaza de Bolívar, near the Gold Museum
Check availabilityClick Clack Hotel sits in a restored colonial house in the old town with a courtyard and a small room count.
Click Clack Hotel
Chapinero · 4★ · $$
A restored house with a courtyard and few rooms
Check availabilityWhat we have left off
The apartment rentals across Chapinero and the north are excluded. They are apartments rather than hotels.
What to do
Go to the Gold Museum first and find the raft. Everything about Colombia's pre-Hispanic past reads differently afterwards.
Cycle the Ciclovía on a Sunday morning. Bicycles rent cheaply and the scale of it is the point.
Take the funicular or cable car up Monserrate at 3,152 metres for the view over the plateau, and go early before the cloud.
See the Botero Museum, which holds works the artist donated on condition they never be sold, alongside his own collection of Picasso, Monet and Bacon.
Go to the Salt Cathedral at Zipaquirá, an hour north, a church carved 180 metres inside a working salt mine.
Practical notes
El Dorado airport — the name is not accidental — is the busiest in Colombia and twenty minutes from the north.
Bogotá has no seasons to speak of, sitting near the equator at altitude: around 14 to 19 degrees by day all year, cold at night, with drier spells from December to February and July to August.
The city has improved enormously but street crime exists. Use registered taxis or apps, and ask the hotel about specific areas.
Every hotel bookable in Bogota
What is the Muisca raft?
A small gold figure showing the gilding ceremony on Lake Guatavita that gave rise to the El Dorado legend. It is in the Gold Museum.
What is the Ciclovía?
About 120 kilometres of main roads closed to cars every Sunday since 1974, used by around a million and a half people.
How high is Bogotá?
About 2,640 metres. Take the first day gently if you have come from sea level.
How many nights?
Three. One for the old town and the museums, one for the north, one for Zipaquirá or Monserrate.