MEDELLÍN · COLOMBIA
Eternal spring, painted hillsides, the city that reinvented itself.
Comuna 13 street art, Guatapé and the lake region, coffee farms in Antioquia and paragliders over the valley. The reviews behind the day trips Medellín is known for, and the corners you might miss.
Only in Medellín
Three things uniquely Medellín.
Other cities have street art, day trips, history walks. These three are specific to here. The hillside that became a gallery. The pueblo at the foot of the rock. The cartel decade narrated by the people who lived through it. Plan the rest of the trip around them.
On the hillside
Comuna 13 & the Graffitour
The neighbourhood that headlines stayed in for the wrong reasons spent two decades repainting itself. The escalators that lifted residents up the hillside are now an open-air gallery, the rappers double as tour guides, and every wall tells the chapter the city is most proud of. Nowhere else turns this hard a corner this publicly.
- 1 Medellin: Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food
- 2 Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour with Street Food
- 3 Comuna 13 Graffitour knows the urban art district of Medellín
Out at the lake
Guatapé & the Peñol
Ninety minutes east of the city, a 220-metre granite monolith rises out of a man-made lake. 740 steps zig-zag to the top for the view that goes on every Colombia postcard. The town at its base, Guatapé, is a riot of painted zocalo panels. Every house tells its own story across its lower walls. The day trip every traveller takes from Medellín.
- 1 Guatapé Tour: Piedra del Peñol with Boat Tour, Breakfast, Lunch
- 2 Day Trip To Guatapé with ,Breakfast, Lunch and Boat Ride
- 3 Tour to Guatape, Piedra del Peñol, lunch, snacks boat trip
The hard chapter
Pablo Escobar Memory Tours
No city of comparable size has narrated its own violent past this directly. Operators take readers to La Catedral, the hilltop barrio where it ended, and the rooftop of the building Escobar fell from. Run by paisas who lived through it. A memory tour, not a glorification one, and singular for that.
- 1 Museo Pablo Escobar
- 2 Medellín: The Real Pablo Escobar Tour
- 3 Pablo Escobar Shared Tour of Medellin
The must-do day
If you only book one tour in Medellín.
The one the city itself recommends first. The day that gets logged on every traveller’s itinerary.
The classics
Medellín’s Most Popular Tours
Comuna 13 graffitours, Guatapé day trips, coffee-farm afternoons, Pablo Escobar memory walks. The tours readers come back to Medellín for.
By place
Pick a corner of Medellín and beyond.
Comuna 13 for the art. The centre for Botero and the library parks. Guatapé for the rock. Coffee country for a slower half-day. The Metrocable for the view from above.
By experience
Or pick how you want to spend the day.
Coffee tasting in the hills. Paragliding over the eternal-spring valley. Salsa lessons and rooftop nights. Cycling the Aburrá, e-biking the city, zipping a waterfall. Twelve ways to spend a Medellín afternoon.
Up in the hills
Coffee Country.
Antioquia is the heart of Colombia’s coffee triangle. Half a day in the hills picks up the planting, the roasting, the tasting and the family who’s farmed the slope for four generations. Three picks we’d send our friends to.
From the sky
Paragliding over the valley.
San Felix sits 1,200m above the Aburrá with thermals reliable enough to teach on. The valley unrolls beneath you the way no taxi ride shows it. Our three favourites for a first flight or a tandem encore.
If you came to move
Adventure days around Medellín.
Zip a waterfall, ride a horse out of the hills, e-bike the Aburrá, quad-bike a finca. Three we’d put on any active itinerary.
From the gondola
The Metrocable view.
The line that lifted Santo Domingo and Comuna 13 doubles as the cheapest sightseeing in town. Three rides that pair the Metrocable with what’s at the top.
The Medellín arc
How the city tells its own story.
No city this size has worked this publicly on its own memory. The cartel decade, the cable cars that came after, the renaissance you can walk through today. Three chapters, three categories of tour to read each one.
The hard decade
How the cartel years are remembered.
The 1980s and 90s are not skipped over. They are walked through. Operators trained by paisas who lived through it take readers to La Catedral, Monaco, and the hilltop barrio where Escobar fell, with the historical context the international press never gave it.
Read the memory tours (39) →The urban lift
Cable cars as social transport.
Medellin invented the gondola-as-public-transit. The Metrocable lifted hillside neighbourhoods like Santo Domingo and Comuna 13 out of physical isolation, connecting them to the metro and the centre. Cities from Rio to La Paz have copied it. Ride the original.
Read the cable-car tours (19) →The renaissance
A city walking its own history.
Plaza Botero, the library-parks built where slums used to be, the architecture of social repair. Historical-walking tours run by people who were children here when the change started. The before-and-after is shown, not lectured.
Read the historical tours (12) →Just added