Plaza de Toros la Santamaría
Historic ring where a nineteen fifty-six political crackdown turned a bullfight deadly.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Plaza de Toros la Santamaría in Bogotá centers on a single afternoon in 1956, when whistling and catcalls from the stands reached the presidential box during a bullfight honoring the ring's anniversary. The target was María Eugenia Rojas, daughter of Colombia's military dictator, and the insult was one a regime chose not to forgive. A week later the same crowd filed back in for another match, unaware of who else had filed in with them. Stand in the stone tiers and look down at the ring where it began.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
La Macarena
Bohemian hillside neighborhood named for bullfighting's patron saint, ringing a historic Moorish-brick bullring.
Parque de la Independencia
Centennial-era park sliced in half by a nineteen fifty-seven highway, edged by curved brick towers wrapped around a bullring.
Teatro Municipal Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
Art deco theater hall where a fiery Friday orator once filled every seat before his assassination shook the city.
Jorge Eliecer Gaitan Museum
Preserved home of an assassinated leader, with the killing's door, clothes and stopped clock on display.
Palacio de Justicia Alfonso Reyes Echandia
Rebuilt courthouse on the site of a nineteen-eighty-five guerrilla siege that killed eleven Supreme Court justices.
Bogotá Museum - Casa Sámano
Colonial mansion where a feared Spanish viceroy ran wartime tribunals before fleeing in disguise.