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History of Bogotá - Colombia

Bogota´s foundation on 6 of August of 1538 by the Spanish conqueror Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada who fought with the Indians chibchas near Bacatá, center of this populated tribe. In this new city the Virreinato of New Granada in 1717 settled down. In 1819, Simón Bolivar seized of her and it designated it like the capital of the Great Colombia (at the moment Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela). It was also the capital of New Granada (present Colombia) when the Great Colombia dissolved in 1830.

The city grew slowly because of Bogota' or “the cachacos ones” wished to conserve their old culture. They wanted much its city and they took care of of its churches, convents and houses constructed in Spanish colonial style and of its educative centers like the Greater School of San Bartholomew (1604), the School Santo Tomás de Aquino, (1608) who became University Santo Tomás (1639) and the Greater School from the Rosary (1653) among others. Bogota has been called for very many time “the South American Athens”. The natives of Bogota are proud to speak best and the purer Castilian of the New World.

Bogota expanded quickly after 1940, due to the immigration of the rural population that arrived at the city in search of better economic opportunities. At the moment, Bogota is the greater financial, political and cultural center of Colombia. Also it is the greater educative center with his famous universities like the University of The $andes, the Javeriana, the National, the Rosary, the School of Engineering Julio Garavito, etc.

Today, Bogota is a cosmopolitan city in constant expansion. She is one of the metropolitan areas of greater growth, not only in Colombia but in South America. His but of seven million inhabitants, including multitudes of immigrants of all parts of the world, they make of the capital a true “microcosm” of the nation.

It has great variety of industries like assembly of automotive vehicles, processing of eatable, the presses and publishing houses, it manufactures of drinks, textiles, articles of metal, machinery, electrical equipment, etc. Many banks and corporations maintain their main house in Bogota. Iron routes and freeways, including the Pan-American freeway, communicate to the city with other great centers.

Bogota, Capital District, include/understand the city and its environs (metropolitan area). The nearest populations are Bosa, Engartivá, Fontibón, Suba and Usme. Usaquén comprises of the capital district from 1991.

Bogota offers, as much to residents as to visitors, everything what a modern city can offer: a vibrant and diverse cultural and intellectual life and an enormous selection of restaurants, nocturnal bars and clubs with great variety of meals and diversions. This colorful city, well-known by its colonial architecture, its collection of pre-Columbian art done in gold, its splendid colonial churches and their magnificent museums, is also a city of futurist architecture, with gigantic buildings and constructions modernísimas. Also it is a city of “gamines” like the children of stories of Dickens, pordioseros, districts of huts and great you congest of traffic. This incredible mixture of prosperity and poverty, of Maseratis and mules, does of Bogota one of the most chaotic, fascinating and aggressive metropolis of the world. The tourists who visit it enamor with her and want to remain there for always.