
Palacio de San Carlos
Colonial palace where an armed midnight raid once forced a president to flee through a window in soap.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Palacio de San Carlos in Bogotá opens on the night of September 25, 1828, when gunfire broke out beneath the window of the room where Simón Bolívar was bathing. You'll hear about the dozen civilians and twenty-five soldiers who stormed the palace at midnight, and about his partner Manuela Sáenz, who woke him and stood her ground with the conspirators as he weighed what to do next. The palace was already two centuries old, built for an archdeacon before generations as a Jesuit seminary and then a presidential residence.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Casa de Nariño
Neoclassical presidential palace built on the birthplace of an independence-era translator jailed for printing banned human-rights texts.
La Candelaria
Cobblestoned colonial quarter of pastel houses, churches and plazas where the capital's history unfolded.
Claustro de San Agustín - Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Colonial cloister-turned-barracks where a revolutionary translator was seized and marched into years of prison.
Bogotá Museum - Casa Sámano
Colonial mansion where a feared Spanish viceroy ran wartime tribunals before fleeing in disguise.
Museo Quinta de Bolívar
Colonial country house gifted to a revolutionary hero, its uniforms, letters and weapons still on display in period gardens.
National Capitol
Neoclassical seat of Congress built in quarried stone over seventy-eight years, on the site of the old viceroy's palace.