Antioquia's capital rests in a valley flanked by gently-sloping mountains. The setting is called the Aburrá Valley, a name given by the Indians who inhabited this paradise of eternal spring before the coming of the Spanish Conquistadors. On the 24th of August of 1541, Lieutenant Luis Tejelo, under the orders of Marshal Jorge Robledo, overthrew and banished the tribes and took possession of the valley in the names of God and the Spanish Crown. But 75 years were to pass before the Spaniards completed their expeditions of conquest and their obsessive quest for gold.


On March 2, 1616, the conquerors were able to pause and take the time to establish the fortified village of San Lorenzo de Aburrá in the valley. Thirty years later the settlement was moved to the site where "Ana's Stream" empties into the Aburrá River (today known as the Medellín.) On November 22, 1764, the Queen Regent, Mariana of Austria, granted the town the name of Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Medellín. Some 3,000 persons inhabited the new villa.


The new settlement was called Medellín in honor of the Spaniard who presided over the Council of the Indies, Pedro Portocarrero y Luna, Count of Medellín, a village in Extremadura. Far from the Magdalena River, Colombia's main communication route for nearly 500 years, buried and hypnotized in this enchanting valley, the villa of Medellín was to continue practically unchanged for two centuries.


In 1862, the city raised its head as the capital of Antioquia. Since then it has not stopped growing. It had been the hub of a network of oxen and mule paths which connected mines, villages and farming centers for cotton and cocoa. Gold first, and then coffee transactions continued to stimulate urban growth. Medellín approached the 20th century with nearly 50,000 inhabitants. In 1951 it had 360,000 and by 1985 it was, with nearly two million inhabitants, Colombia' second largest city and a vigorous manufacturing and business center.


A MULTIFACETED CITY


Medellín has become a shopper's paradise. There is nothing like a Paisa's affability and diligence in helping a client. Therefore it is delightful to go shopping in this city. Or to be gratified with attentive service, whether in a fine restaurant or at a neighborhood shop. Doctors and hospitals in Medellín have gained prestige for such triumphs as the first kidney transplants in Latin America. Each week charter flights arrive in the city from neighboring countries or Caribbean islands, carrying travelers who are in need of medical or dental checkups or treatment.


Equal skill has been given to architecture and urban design. The proverbial beauty of Antiqueñan homes is echoed in the streets and avenues and now in the shopping malls built in recent years. There are over half a dozen of the latter. Utilizing the valley's climate of perpetual spring, the city has built malls which reflect the Arab's historical designs for hospitals: in the midst of lovely gardens. The lanes and interior footpaths skirt fountains and waterfalls and terraces where one can sip some famous Colombian coffee or Antioqueñan Aguardiente or Indian tea or Japanese sake.


EVENTS


Antioqueños are so fond of flowers that they not only plant them in gardens and pots but also hang them on their backs and carry them in parades every year under the August sun. This marvelous festival is called The Carriers' Parade (Desfile de los Silleteros). Hundreds of artisans weave authentic tapestries with flowers of every kind and hue. They design scenes, sketches, messages and then carry these works of art on their backs for hours through the main streets of Medellín in what is one of the world's most beautiful public spectacles. From January to February, an exciting bullfight season takes place, from April to May the city is host to an international orchid show, in June the Tango Festival occurs, in August there is a fair featuring elegant "paso fino" horses, whose special gait is unique in the world, and in September, a haute couture competition. 
ATTRACTIONS


Antioqueños enjoy close ties with both their ancestral and cosmopolitan customs. In Medellín, for example, one can listen to practically any style of music. There are taverns and discotheques which specialize in rock in all its varieties, or in jazz, classical, operatic, or Caribbean music, as well as boleros and ballads and of course, tango. An entire sector of the city, Manrique, is consecrated to rendering tribute to Argentine music. And no other city remembers and honors Carlos Gardel like Medellín, where the singer met his death in an airplane crash in 1935.


The city's cultural centers also reflect the people's ardent desire to keep up with the most contemporary movements and events in art. There are excellent book stores and art galleries, museums, and sculpture parks.


In several museums are collections of Antioquenan artists including Pedro Nel Gómez and Rodrigo Arenas Betancur, who in the manner of the Mexican masters at the beginning of this century, reflect the world of everyday work. At the Museum of Antioquia there is a complete collection on exhibit of oils and sculptures by world-famous Fernando Botero.


Mansions, train stations, cathedrals, haciendas and public buildings still reflect, in different sectors of the city, the Republican architecture of skyscrapers and new concepts, like that of The Metropolitan Theater or José María Córdova International Airport.


From Cerro Nutibara, a hill which rises from the floor of the Aburrá Valley, one can enjoy a panoramic view of the Medellín skyline. At and around the summit are restaurants, handicrafts shops and an enchanting reproduction of a typical Antioqueñan village plaza.


THE COFFEE REGION


What used to be called "Old Caldas", in the Central mountain range to the south of the department of Antioquia, is today divided into three departments: Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío. This is the so-called "zone of the Antioquenan colonization" that developed during the last century when whole families from Antioquia, exasperated by the civil wars which devastated the region, organized expeditions to isolated, rugged areas where they felled forests and founded cities.


The coffee plant adapted marvellously to the mountainous terrain and climactic conditions. Its cultivation spread to the point of providing the major part of the country's coffee, which is the nation's principal export commmodity. Excursions through the coffee region pass by landscapes and villages of great beauty. Traditional coffee haciendas, beautiful in their architecture and covered in flowers, emerge from coffee plantations. In the villages the buildings are also notable and form part of what is known as the architecture of colonization.


The coffee region is also a land of deep-rooted traditions, folklore, crafts and festivals. Local dishes, served in the famous fondas, are proverbial, notably the bandeja paisa, which consists of generous helpings of red beans and ground beef, ripe plantain, chicharrón (pork crisp), rice and the indispensable arepa (corn crumpet).

Antioquia has also been called The Mountain. Its people use this nickname in remembrance of the enormous challenges they faced to settle in the folds of one of the mountain ranges of the Andean chain which traverses Colombia.


The first Spaniards to arrive in this region of the New World were mainly Basques. They battled so tenaciously against the Indians and the weather and tropical insects that little by little they began to appear like the Biblical Chosen People, appointed to fight in the name of God as they wandered in the desert.

Located in the northwest quadrant of the country, the settlement was the scenario of an epic colonization process. Farmers without land and miners without mines began to push southward along the spine of the central mountain chain. This pilgrimage continued for over a century, and there are chroniclers who claim that it still continues and that the descendants of those pioneers still wander, though today they are searching for gold in the plains of Australia.


Caravans of oxen and mules, guided by skilled, picaresque mule-drivers, crossed mountains and valleys and brought progress from village to village. Antioquia soon became a powerful province, avid and passionate for art and commerce. Audacious entrepeneurs acrossed the Atlantic to purchase modern machinery and returned bringing engineers and technicians trained in Germany, England, and even Sweeden. Others would then transform or reinvent existing technology. Workshops became specialized, and many evolved into factories. Drills were invented to mine the ore deposits and soon the first iron ingots were produced in the country. Factories and foundaries were born and banks were opened.


A HISTORY OF PROGRESS


Since the end of the 19th century, Antioquia has protagonized the epic story of building Colombia's first great industrial complex. At the turn of that century, Antioquia was one of the few regions in Latin America, together with Monterrey in Mexico, to achieve the triumph of generating truly national production. The seal "Made in Medellín" on factory products or on those produced in nearby towns appeared on coffee threshers and peelers, sugar mills, irons, firearms, tools, silk-winding machines, drills, cigars, soaps, beer, chinawear, clothing, and even clocks for spires.


A Cuban engineer, Francisco Cisneros, was contracted to cut through the mountains and lay the railroad tracks. This was what was needed to scale the heights to the Aburrá valley, carrying the machinery and looms imported from Europe and the United States, or to embark merchandise, gold, and thousands of sacks of coffee from docks on the mighty Magdalena River.


The harsh topography, the poor soil, and the lack of Indian laborers, as well as the overwhelming attraction of the gold mines, prevented the emergence of a land-rich aristocracy in Antioquia. This led to the prevalence of a mercantile spirit in the Antioqueñan character as well as equality in dealing with others.


Antioqueños were the first to free their black slaves and to advocate abolition of slavery. Moreover, many of the leaders in the wars for independence, like Uribe Uribe, were Antioqueños. And from this same stock came some of their most furious opponents.


The aggressive drive of the "Paisas", as Antioquia's four and one-half million inhabitants are commonly called, is behind the area's production of textiles, gold, bananas, coffeee, and hydroelectric power. Antioquia exports flowers, ready-to-wear, fabrics, and bananas. Today its people push to be the first in Colombia to have a subway, and they are building one in Medellín.


CLIMATE AND REGIONS


Antioquia's geography embraces every clime and landscape characteristic of Colombia. Plains, savannahs, lakes, jungles, rivers, mountains, canyons, even beaches on the Caribbean. Perhaps the territory's 63,000 square kilometers only lack snow-capped peaks.


Nevertheless, such limpid perpetual snows find a substitue in the permanent whiteness of the people's houses. Few people in Colombia can equal Antioqueños in spotless maintenance of their homes' walls and gardens. There are so many flowering plants in the windows and balconies of homes in the region that the landscape is reminiscent of the streets of Holland, where every house seems to be embroidered with a rainbow. One town in Antioqia is even called garden (Jardín).


Santa Fe de Antioquia, the oldest of the Colonial settlements and paved with cobblestones, is only 67 kilometers from Medellín. Along this road to the West, villages like San Jerónimo and Olaya offer delicious fruit and exquisite handicrafts.


To the east are plateaus of Rionegro, where the climate is springlike and 19th century haciendas have been transformed into museums and recreational centers for cultural events. Descending from the highlands to the valley of the Magdalena River, one discovers the impressive waterfalls and the Río Claro Canyon, almost virgin forest with immense caverns and pink marble quarries. At Aldea Doradal, white-walled hostels in the Mediterranean style offer rest after a visit to an exotic zoo park.


Invaluable remains of Indian cultures are preserved in the southwestern villages of Venecia, Urrao, Jardín, and Táesis. This region possesses the most extensive coffee plantations in the territory, as well as the National Orchid Park and the Páramo (high moors) of Frontino, still inhabited by the spectacled bear.