Medellin 1; Provenza / Pablo Escobar related sites

Medillin is known as the "City of Eternal Spring" due to its temperate year-round climate. It is a very large city - larger than Bogota, in fact - and the only city in Colombia with a local metro service. Medellin was, for many years, synonymous with drug trafficking and violence due to Pablo Escobar, but is now reinvented as a centre of art and culture.

On Monday evening after the long drive from Hacienda Combia in Calarca, we check into our hotel (La Campana) in the El Poblado neighbourhood in the southern part of Medellin, and walk to Provenza for food and a look around; Provenza is a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly sub-district of El Poblado, and serves as the Medillin's main hub for dining and nightlife.

On Wednesday, today, we visit some of the Pablo Escobar related sites after driving through the city. Firstly, it is the Parque Memorial la Inflexion, built where the Monaco Building, Escobar's property, was located until its demolition in 2019; it is a tribute to 46,000 victims of narcotraffico in the country and celebrates modern Colombia. We also visit the Casa de la Memoria Museum to help understand the impact of decades of violence on the city's citizens.

We see the house where Pablo was seen on the phone to his son; he ran out the back to escape via a rooftop on the other side, and was killed here (or did he shoot himself...)

We then go to Comuna 13....Läs mer