No longer a no-go: the Colombian city of Medellín has been reborn

Colombia's second city has been transformed from notorious 'murder capital' to a hip hotspot of creativity, says Stanley Stewart

21 January 2018 - 00:00 By Stanley Stewart

Twenty-five years ago, Time magazine dubbed Medellín "the most dangerous city on earth".
Drug lords lived like kings, judges and cops were regularly assassinated; paramilitaries invaded neighbourhoods; and ordinary people disappeared overnight. Even 10 years ago, violence reigned.
Fast-forward to the present, and Medellín is a delightful place of law-abiding, entrepreneurial folk, with one of the fastest-growing economies on the continent.
In 2013, Medellín was hailed as "the most innovative city in the world" by the Urban Land Institute, brimming with creative ideas, such as the eco-árbol, an air-purifier, and the Orquideorama for growing orchids.Traditionally, Colombia's second city had a reputation as a savvy and entrepreneurial place. But in the '80s and '90s, those business smarts made Medellín the leading supplier for America's cocaine habit. At the head of its operations was Pablo Escobar, king of cocaine lords, who would eventually be gunned down by US-funded paramilitaries on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.
It was also one of the front lines in the battle between the government and FARC, Colombia's guerrilla movement. Medellín became the world's murder capital.THE BIG REBITH
The transformation, of course, is part of a larger national revival. After decades of civil war, Colombia has been born again. Young people who fled abroad for education and work in the bad years have come home, bearing an international sophistication and an entrepreneurial energy.
But in Medellín - where public projects helped instil a sense of pride - the renaissance has been more dramatic than anywhere else in the country.
Today Medellín feels newborn. It helps that the setting - a long valley between two Andean mountain ridges - is gorgeous.
It is the capital of Antioquia province, a fertile region famous for its coffee plantations and its flower farms, for its orchids and butterflies.In the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAMM), I headed for the new galleries of Colombian artists. In the botanical garden, I followed boardwalks through tropical rainforest laced with orchids and bamboo.
In Barefoot Park, where passers-by are encouraged to discard their shoes to wriggle their toes in pebbles, mud, and grass before soaking their feet in pools of water, I asked my guide, Julian, how Medellín had gone from gangs and gunfire to such Zen-like experiences.
"Public transport," he said. It was a moment before I realised he was serious.
"Don't laugh," he chided me. "The metro was the beginning of all the good stuff. We suddenly realised things could change."
As we rode it together, Julian told me more: "When the metro was constructed in 1994, it was the first positive thing that had happened in this city for decades. It gave us confidence. We realised things could be different, that progress was possible
"Suddenly it was easier to get around. People went to work in different places from where they lived. The metro became a bridge, joining disparate parts of the city. People mixed. It changed the psychology of the city."
We hopped off at the Plazoleta de las Esculturas, a grand central square with 23 large bronze sculptures by Fernando Botero, Latin America's most famous artist, and Medellín's most famous son.
His figures are exaggerated and fun. It seemed the whole square - strolling couples and families, old people on benches - was infected by their playful character.GREAT GLASS PODS
The cable cars are the best part of Medellín's new transport system. Connecting to the metro, they are the answer to the steep streets of the labyrinthine barrios that climb the mountainsides above the city centre. They carry passengers over the rooftops and congested lanes in glass pods.
Riding above the city, enjoying the views, passengers relax, conversations start. People shake hands as they disembark.
When we took the cable car up to Santo Domingo, it was 10 minutes of pleasure rather than the hectic, stressed hour it used to take.
The cable car is also how one reaches Santa Domingo, Pablo Escobar's old neighbourhood, once one of the worst barrios in the city.
On a scale of one to 10, the sense of threat now feels like minus eight.
A new library and community centre - the Parque Biblioteca España - has helped the neighbourhood transform. Just beneath the library, on steep slopes of crowded housing, the architect built a bamboo bridge between two warring neighbourhoods. People said it was madness; they would kill each other. But they got to know one another instead.One of Medellín's cable cars - the Linea L - escapes the city altogether, rising over the top of the mountain ridge then sailing across the open spaces of Parque Arvi, a nature reserve, where hiking trails amble among woods and lakes. To the south lay the green rolling hills of the Zona Cafetera with its coffee plantations and homestays.
West of the city is its charming predecessor, the sleepy Santa Fe de Antioquia.
This was the original provincial capital, founded in the 16th century by Spanish conquistadors. It remains a glorious colonial town of cobbled streets and tree-shaded squares, of baroque churches and whitewashed houses whose clocks all seemed to have stopped at the moment in 1826 when the provincial government moved to Medellín.DIRTY DANCING
On my last night in Medellín, I went to a pop-up salsa joint. The band played, and barmen were serving a stream of cold beers. The place was packed.
There seemed to be every type here, from truck drivers to hipsters, from women with heels and cleavage to willowy, tattooed bohemians. Everyone was in thrall to the music, infected by the fever of salsa.
If I have made Medellín sound a dull goody-two-shoes, orderly as a Swiss picnic, I have done it a disservice. Let the salsa joint remind us that this is Colombia - sexy, passionate, tempestuous, and with astonishingly beautiful people.
The horn section wailed, and a packed floor of dancers, intense and sweaty, surfed through the music. The place crackled with erotic electricity.
This too was Medellín. The metro might be squeaky clean but the salsa, happily, was as dirty as ever. - The Daily Telegraph
• For more information, see colombia.travel...

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