Experience the best of Villa de Leyva

Villa de Leyva was founded in 1572 on a dry plain about 2,100 metres up in the Andes of Boyacá, and it has kept its colonial look: whitewashed houses with red-tile roofs, wrought-iron balconies and streets of stone. The Plaza Mayor is one of the largest town squares in Colombia, a vast cobbled expanse with a fountain and a church at one side.

The dry hills hold fossils. At El Fósil, the skeleton of a marine reptile, a Kronosaurus, lies where it was found, left by the sea that covered this area more than a hundred million years ago. El Infiernito is a field of stone pillars used by the Muisca people as an astronomical observatory, and the Santo Ecce Homo convent stands among the hills. The Iguaque sanctuary protects a mountain lake sacred in Muisca myth.

Boyacá cooking is hearty, with cuchuco, a thick wheat soup, cheesy arepas boyacenses, and sweet wafers called obleas. The sun is strong and the nights are cold. In August the windy skies fill with kites at the annual kite festival.