48 Fun Facts About Bogota

Which conquistador founded Bogotá in 1538?

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. Months later two rival expeditions, Belalcázar's from the south and Federmann's from Venezuela, reached the same plateau, and the three leaders agreed to take their claims to Spain.

Which indigenous people inhabited the Bogotá savanna before the Spanish arrived?

Muisca. Famed as goldsmiths, they had no gold of their own: they mined salt on the plateau and traded with neighbouring peoples for the metal.

By what name was Bogotá known under Spanish colonial rule?

Santafé. The name was borrowed from a town in the founder's native Spain, and for centuries the city was styled Santa Fe de Bogotá, pairing it with the older indigenous name.

Which future head of state, then a 21-year-old law student, was caught up in Bogotá's 1948 riots?

Fidel Castro. In town for a student congress, he joined the crowds and took a rifle from a police station they had overrun, later calling the uprising a formative experience.

Which 1819 battle cleared Simón Bolívar's path into Bogotá?

Boyacá. The fight near a river bridge ended with most of the royalist army and its commander taken prisoner, and Bolívar rode into the capital three days later.

Which South American capital stands even higher above sea level than Bogotá?

Quito. In 2007 FIFA banned international matches above 2,500 metres, shutting out both cities; after a month of Andean protests it raised the limit to 3,000 and both were reprieved.

In the city's official name, Bogotá, D.C., what do the letters D.C. stand for?

Distrito Capital. The district stands outside Colombia's departments: Bogotá is the seat of government of the surrounding one, Cundinamarca, without being part of it.

Which performers did Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus hire in the 1990s to shame bad drivers?

Mimes. He reckoned Bogotanos feared ridicule more than fines, so 420 of them were sent out to mock traffic offenders on the city's chaotic streets.

What is the name of Bogotá's main airport?

El Dorado. It shares its name with the legend born on this plateau, of a chief coated in gold dust, the tale that drew the conquistadors up into these mountains.

Which airline, founded in 1919 and among the oldest still flying, has its headquarters in Bogotá?

Avianca. South America's first commercial airline began not in the mountain capital but on the Caribbean coast, as a company founded by Colombians and Germans.

Which traditional sport, played in Bogotá's bars, involves throwing a metal disc at targets packed with gunpowder?

Tejo. A clean hit sets off a small explosion, and a night's play traditionally comes with crates of beer; Colombia declared it the national sport in 2000.

Which waterfall on the Bogotá River plunges more than 130 metres just outside the city?

Tequendama Falls. In local legend a hero struck the rock with his staff to open it, draining the flood that once covered the whole plateau.

The number of huts at Bogotá's 1538 founding honoured which group?

The Apostles. Twelve straw huts went up, and a chronicler wrote that the founders wanted their city to last as long as the Church the twelve had begun.

Which town, a day trip north of Bogotá, is known for an underground cathedral carved out of a salt mine?

Zipaquirá. Despite its name the church has no bishop, so it is not officially a cathedral at all; its crosses and altars are carved straight from the rock salt.

In which square is the city's founding site traditionally located?

The official founding followed eight months later at Theusaquillo.

After 1717, Bogotá became the capital of which Spanish viceroyalty?

New Granada. Being the capital did not always mean hosting the viceroy: the one in office through the 1740s never lived there and ruled from Cartagena on the coast.

Bogotá's 1810 uprising against Spanish rule was sparked by a staged quarrel over the loan of which object?

A flower vase. Creole patriots picked the quarrel with a Spanish merchant on purpose, to stir up a crowd and force a new governing council; the day, 20 July, is Colombia's independence day.

Who translated and secretly printed the Rights of Man in colonial Bogotá?

Antonio Nariño. The pamphlet cost him prison and exile, but he is now honoured as a forerunner of independence: the presidential palace stands on the site of the house where he was born.

Which Bogotá building did M-19 guerrillas seize in November 1985, in a siege that left about 100 dead?

The Palace of Justice. When the army stormed the building to end the siege, the dead included about half of the judges of Colombia's Supreme Court.

Whose assassination in 1948 sparked the Bogotá riots known as El Bogotazo?

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. The Liberal leader had been expected to win the next presidential election, and the rioting that followed his murder left much of the city centre in ruins.

What is Bogotá's bus rapid transit system called?

TransMilenio. Mayor Enrique Peñalosa scrapped plans for a subway and elevated highways and, from 2000, gave the middle lanes of the main avenues to buses at a fraction of the cost.

Which transport has lifted commuters to Bogotá's hillside Ciudad Bolívar since 2018?

A cable car. Its gondolas climb the steep hills in about a quarter of an hour and are reckoned to save residents at least 45 minutes a journey.

What is Bogotá's Sunday car-free programme on its main roads called?

Ciclovía. It began with a group of cycling enthusiasts in December 1974, now closes more than 120 km of streets every Sunday and holiday, and has been copied by cities around the world.

What is Bogotá's licence-plate-based driving restriction called?

Pico y placa. The name means 'peak and plate': the scheme began in 1998 as a rush-hour ban, and the last digit of a car's number plate decides which days it must stay at home.

What pulled Bogotá's first tramway when it opened in 1884?

Mules. They had also hauled the dismantled tramcars up the mountains to the city; electric trams took over in 1910, the riots of 1948 wrecked part of the fleet, and the last tram ran in 1951.

What is Bogotá's historic centre called?

La Candelaria. The district is named for Our Lady of Candelaria, to whom a colonial church here is dedicated, and its streets of colonial houses are where the city began.

How did Simón Bolívar escape assassins who burst into his Bogotá palace in 1828?

He jumped from a window. His companion Manuela Sáenz urged him out and then stalled the plotters herself, which earned her the nickname 'the liberator of the Liberator'.

Which mountain overlooking Bogotá has a pilgrim church at its summit that visitors can reach by funicular?

Monserrate. It is named after the mountain shrine of Montserrat in Catalonia, and pilgrims traditionally make the steep climb to its sanctuary of the Fallen Lord on foot.

A famous treasure of Bogotá's Gold Museum is a small golden model of what?

A raft. It is thought to show a ruler setting out for a ceremony on a lake; about 20 cm long, it was found in 1969 in a cave near the town of Pasca, where it had been left as an offering.

Which Colombian artist's gift of 208 artworks founded a Bogotá museum?

Fernando Botero. He handed the collection to Colombia's central bank in 2000 and arranged the rooms of the old mansion himself; the museum opened that year with free entry.

Which Bogotá museum occupies a former prison called the Panopticon?

National Museum. Colombia's oldest museum, founded in 1823, it was given the old penitentiary in 1946, when the inmates were moved out as the city prepared to host a Pan-American conference.

What is Bogotá's huge free open-air music festival, first held in 1995, called?

Rock al Parque. Only at the first edition did one venue, a bullring, charge for entry; it was dropped the next year so the whole festival could be free, and the crowds now run into the hundreds of thousands.

What was Bogotá's 2007 UNESCO title?

World Book Capital. It beat bids from Amsterdam, Dublin and Vienna in the first round to draw applications from Latin America; the jury praised its plans to promote reading.

Which Bogotá theater, opened in 1892, holds the title of national theater?

Cristóbal Colón Theater. It takes Columbus's name because it opened as the stage for the celebrations of 12 October 1892, 400 years to the day after his first landing.

Which Hollywood actor was born in Bogotá before growing up in Queens, New York?

John Leguizamo. His family left Colombia when he was a small child, and the turbulent home life he knew in Queens became the raw material of his one-man stage shows.

What is ajiaco as it is served in Bogotá?

A chicken and potato soup. It takes three kinds of potato, and it is flavoured with guascas, a herb that is considered a weed in the United States.

What hot drink is made in Bogotá from aguapanela, a sugarcane brew, and aguardiente?

Canelazo. The name gives the recipe away: canela is Spanish for cinnamon, which is boiled into the hot drink served across the Andean highlands from Colombia to Peru.

Alfredo Di Stéfano starred for which Colombian club before he joined Real Madrid?

Millonarios. He joined the Bogotá club in 1949, when Colombia's professional league was luring stars with high pay, and won four titles before leaving for Spain in 1953.

Which team did Colombia beat 1-0 at Bogotá's El Campín in the 2001 Copa América final?

Mexico. Days before kick-off the tournament had been cancelled over security fears and then reinstated; the hosts went on to win it without conceding a single goal.

Bogotá hosted the first edition of which multi-sport event in 1938?

Bolivarian Games. They were staged to mark the 400th anniversary of the city's founding, opening on the anniversary itself, and El Campín stadium was finished the same month.

What colours make up Bogotá's flag?

Yellow and red. Patriots wore armbands in those colours during the rising of July 1810, yet the city did not make the flag official until 1952.

What bird appears at the centre of Bogotá's coat of arms?

A black eagle. The emperor Charles V granted the arms in 1548, and the crowned bird is thought to stand for the Spanish crown the young city then served.

Which famous naturalist travelled up to Bogotá in 1801 to spend two months with the botanist José Celestino Mutis?

Alexander von Humboldt. Mutis opened to him the vast archive of plant paintings that his royal expedition's artists had been making since 1783; the city's botanical garden now bears Mutis's name.

Which Bogotá skyscraper overtook the Colpatria Tower to become Colombia's tallest building?

BD Bacatá. It was crowdfunded: thousands of ordinary Colombians bought shares to build it, although money troubles later stalled the work of finishing it.

Which nickname reflects Bogotá's long reputation as a seat of learning?

The Athens of South America. The label took hold in the late 1800s, when foreign writers praised the city's cultural life and its scholars; its oldest university was founded in 1580.

Which Formula One and IndyCar race winner was born in Bogotá in 1975?

Juan Pablo Montoya. He started in karts at five, won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 and, after a Formula One career that included victory at Monaco, won it again 15 years later.

At the 2018 census, which city was Colombia's second most populous, after Bogotá?

Medellín. It has about a third of the capital's population but something Bogotá lacked for decades: its metro has run since 1995, while the capital's first line was still being built in 2026.

Which of Bogotá's localities, the largest by area, is almost entirely high mountain moorland?

Sumapaz. Its páramo is considered the largest in the world, and the spongy moorland soil stores the rain that feeds the water supply of the plateau below.