Before Macondo existed, before the Nobel Prize, and before Gabriel García Márquez became the most important writer on the continent, there was a cold, gray, and solemn city that changed his destiny forever: Bogotá.
In 1943, at just 16 years old, Gabo left the heat of the Caribbean and arrived in the capital with a scholarship to finish high school. An unfamiliar city awaited him, full of men dressed in black, marked by a solemnity imposed by the weather and tradition. But it was also an intellectual, bustling, and poetic city. “Bogotá was my real university”, he would say years later. Although he began studying Law at the National University, he never wanted to be a lawyer. He fell in love with journalism, with storytelling, with words spoken with precision and poetry.
A tour through the city that left its mark on the Nobel Prize winner
Bogotá, más cerca al cielo de Macondo (Bogotá, closer to the sky of Macondo) is a literary tour visiting the places that marked Gabriel García Márquez’s formative years. A journey through the historic center of La Candelaria, where colonial architecture, street poetry, anecdotes about the Nobel Prize winner, and the deep history of a city that welcomed, shaped, and transformed him all come together.
The route begins in front of the Casa de la Moneda, on Calle 11, where you hear how was his arrived in the city. “The cold forced me to think more clearly,” a voice says in an audio recording as the tram sets off. The route passes by the Luis Ángel Arango Library, goes up Carrera 5ª and continues along Calle 12, behind the Palace of Justice, a few steps from the Bolívar Square—where the institutional heart of the country beats today. According to records from the Bogotá Digital Library, this was once the location of the main station of the Bogotá Tram. There, among stories of the tram and poetry recitals, visitors begin to feel the pulse of a city that inspired much of the writer's work.
Upon reaching San Miguel del Príncipe Street, the route turns onto Carrera 2a, a street lined with some of the oldest houses in Bogotá. This street leads directly to Chorro de Quevedo, said to be the birthplace of the city, and from there, we turn down Carrera 11 and then onto Carrera 3a. The tour takes us along Eje Ambiental (Environmental Axis) to the Journalists’ Park—meeting place for the Bogotá’s intellectuals and named after him in 2014. It also highlights the importance of Café El Molino, an iconic spot where writers, artists, and thinkers used to gather. As Gabo himself recalled, it was the perfect place to listen to the evening conversations of the great master León de Greiff with the most renowned writers of the time, an experience he recounted in his book Living to Tell the Tale.
His connection to El Espectador also comes to life—as you pass by the building that bears its name—a newspaper he was associated with for several years and where he began to forge his legend as a writer, journalist, and reporter. It is worth remembering one of his most famous quotes: “Journalism is the best profession in the world.”
Among empanadas, coffees and poems
The route continues to the Los Andes University to reach Quinta de Bolívar, located at Calle 21 # 4A – 30. Here, we stop for a moment and hear how this place inspired much of the Nobel Prize winner’s novel The General in His Labyrinth came from, a book that recounts the last events and years of Simón Bolívar's life in Bogotá.
The streets we pass through were the origin of the old trams in 1947, the same ones that García Márquez took on Sundays to explore Bogotá while reading poetry and dreaming of his future stories.
After visiting the Quinta de Bolívar, the tram gets back on its way to Monserrate, where the guide brings to life the impact of the Bogotazo—the social uprising that happened on April 9, 1948, in Bogotá, following the assassination of political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. The event triggered a wave of violence and marked a turning point in both Colombia’s political history and the young writer’s life. It marked him forever, and he returned to the Caribbean. “That day I realized that the country had split in two,” he later wrote in Living to Tell the Tale.
Then we passed by the Church of Our Lady of Egypt and walked along Calle 9 and Carrera 2. Along the way, we kept listening to stories and anecdotes about Gabo in the big capital: his experiences, how he found love, and his family. Even though he sometimes had to leave for work or other reasons, he always returned to the cold Bogotá of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s — the city that welcomed him when he was just 16, saw him grow up, and which he loved deeply.
The story keeps you engaged until you reach the next stop: the Enchiladas restaurant. From its terrace, with a cup of coffee and a empanada bogotana—the Nobel Prize winner’s favorite snack—you can take in the city while reflecting on Gabo’s work and legacy. There, you can talk about astronomy and literature, look up at the sky as he once did, and realize, once and for all, that Macondo isn’t as far away as we might think: it’s also in Bogotá, in its streets, in its memory, and in this tour that invites you to walk the city through the eyes of a young man who, without knowing it, was preparing to change world literature.
At this point in the route, the guides explain how a star and an exoplanet were named Macondo and Melquíades in 2019, as a tribute to the writer and his literary universe.
Bogotá, a literary city
This route not only brings to life the story of a Nobel Prize winner, but also celebrates Bogotá as a literary city, as a cultural capital that has been a cradle of ideas, stories, poetry, and resistance. Here, among cobblestones, cafés, and hills, Gabriel García Márquez found a city that left a lasting impression on him. Exploring Bogotá through this route is not just about following in the footsteps of a young Gabo: it’s about sensing that the city itself was also a muse and a protagonist. Stories aren’t born out of thin air; they come from the streets, the corners, the cafés, and the memories.
As he himself wrote “Life is not what one has lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it to tell it." Bogotá remembers Gabo, and tells his story well.
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