Calle de La Sierpe
Winding colonial street of freed-slave artisan houses turned mural-lined open-air gallery.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Calle de La Sierpe in Cartagena's Getsemani weighs two competing stories behind its name, a historian's plain theory about a homesick Sevillian settler and a stranger local legend from 1608 involving a hissing sound, a giant serpent, and a mayor's investigation. Beneath either version it traces who actually lived on this street, the masons, blacksmiths, shipwrights and dockworkers, many freed or enslaved Africans, who ran Cartagena's port while the walled city sheltered its elite. It follows how that history still shows up today, in murals painted along the same walls.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Getsemani
Working-class harbor district where artisans forged bells, cannons, and an uprising against Spanish rule.
Callejón Angosto
Coral-stone alley barely wide enough for two, strung with colorful umbrellas overhead.
San Diego
Colonial artisans' quarter of cobbled lanes around a leafy plaza and a baroque parish church.
Plaza de la Trinidad
Colonial plaza where armed artisans forced a colonial council to declare independence.
LA BOCA DEL PUENTE
Arcaded colonial walkway lined with vendors selling handmade tropical candies on a former slave-trading plaza.
Plaza San Pedro Claver
Colonial square filled with life-size welded iron figures of everyday street life.