Audioguides Bogota

Bogota sits at 2,640 meters above sea level, which changes everything: the light here is sharper than at sea level, the nights are colder than newcomers expect, and new arrivals often spend their first afternoon slightly out of breath in a way that feels metaphorically appropriate for a city this dense with stimulation. Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founded it in 1538 after displacing the Muisca people from a savanna that had supported civilization for centuries before the Spanish arrived. The Gold Museum, two blocks from Plaza de Bolivar, holds 55,000 pieces of pre-Colombian goldwork from those civilizations -- the most significant collection of this kind in the world.

La Candelaria, the colonial center around Plaza de Bolivar, is where the city makes historical sense, but Bogota's contemporary identity belongs to Usaquen (a former village absorbed into the northern suburbs, still with its Sunday flea markets), Chapinero (galleries, barrooms, and concentrated nightlife), and the city's walls themselves, which function as one of South America's most impressive public art canvases.

Every Sunday, Ciclovía turns 120 kilometers of roads over exclusively to cyclists and pedestrians -- a policy running uninterrupted since 1976 that still feels like a minor act of urban radicalism. Come on a Sunday if you possibly can.