Town of the painted panels
Guatapé
Every house in this Colombian lakeside town has a band of painted relief pictures along the foot of its walls.
Why Guatapé is zócalo blue
Guatapé is a small town in the hills of Antioquia, two hours east of Medellín, beside a reservoir created in the 1970s. Its houses are painted in bright colours, but the special feature is the zócalo, the lower band of the wall. Each one carries panels moulded in cement and painted: flowers, sheep, sunflowers, llamas, musical instruments, or scenes showing the family's trade. The custom began in the early 20th century, when a few residents decorated their homes, and it has since become the rule for the whole town. One street is devoted to memories of the old town before the lake. Nearby stands a huge bare rock with a staircase to the top.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Guatapé" on Wikipedia. If you know Guatapé and we have it wrong, tell us.
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The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jodhpur In: Lavpatel2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Leh In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Multan Pk: Yaarahmadd, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Cartagena Co: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Cano Cristales Co: Astromario, CC BY-SA 3.0, source