Medellin City Center

15 November 2019 | After going to the city center walking and passing by a so-so neighborhood, we decided that a guided tour would be good. So, we joined the Real City tour, and it was worth it. The center is messy and look like a massive market, we know now how to get around.

By the way, Medellin and Antioquia (the department) people are called Paisa.

The city center of Medellin has a bad reputation. An avant-gardist Mayor started the transformation! He decided to turn dark places into areas screaming “hope”. For example, the main square, which used to be a drug dealing place, is now the Parque de las Luces. And, next to it, where two torned down building created a sort of no-go zone, the Mayor built the Secretary of Education (la Secratria de Educacion). Genious move

The artist and sculptor Fernando Botero contributed to make the city nicer. He gave many of his hilarious unproportioned sculptures (mostly naked) to the city of Medellin. Most of them are in Plaza Botero.

Most Colombian seem to suffer from the country’s cocaine reputation. It’s a hard stain to wash and most Colombians were touched by the narco-terrors in some way or another, especially one known character. Our tour guide called him Voldemort, you know, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.