About Cartagena City Guide

An independent, unofficial guide to visiting Cartagena de Indias: what to see, which ticket to buy for which fort or museum, and how to spend one, two or three days in the heat without wasting one of them. We are not the Alcaldía de Cartagena, Corporación Turismo Cartagena de Indias, Escuela Taller Cartagena de Indias (which runs the fortifications), the Museo Histórico de Cartagena, the Banco de la República museums or Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia, and we sell nothing directly. The whole guide starts on the Cartagena city guide homepage.

Why this site exists

Cartagena punishes a vague plan in a few specific ways. A Rosario Islands day tour never covers the whole bill: a port charge collected in cash at Muelle de la Bodeguita and a national park fee both come on top, and no single authority publishes the port charge. Castillo San Felipe charges a foreign adult COP 38,000, more than the rate for Colombians, and a guide at the gate is a separate fee on top. The walls, Las Bóvedas and the Torre del Reloj have no official visiting page at all, while the Museo del Oro Zenú is free.

So every price, hour and closed day here is read off the official page of the body that runs the place. Where the official source does not state a figure, the page says not stated instead of borrowing a plausible one. The detail is on Islas del Rosario, Castillo San Felipe and Cartagena tickets.

Where the information comes from

Opening hours, closed days and admission prices come from the official sites of the places themselves: fortificacionescartagena.com.co for Castillo San Felipe and the Bocachica forts, muhca.gov.co for the Palacio de la Inquisición, banrepcultural.org for the Museo del Oro Zenú, museonavaldelcaribe.org, sanpedroclaver.co, santuariolapopa.com, mamcartagena.org and aviarionacional.co. Park fees for the Rosario Islands come from parquesnacionales.gov.co, city information from cartagenadeindias.travel and cartagena.gov.co, and bus fares from transcaribe.gov.co. Each page names its sources.

Tour prices, durations, ratings and review counts are the booking platform's own published numbers. Practical detail about the city, such as where the boats leave from, which gate of the walled city to use or what a beach vendor may charge, is cross-checked against several published sources rather than taken from any one of them.

What we do not claim

There is no invented author here, no character who lives in Getsemaní and no claim that someone from this site stood on a particular pier on a particular morning. We do not operate or personally conduct these tours, and we do not inspect museums, boats or beach clubs or audit any operator.

We also hold no bookings. Every Check Availability button hands you to the platform the tour is sold on, where the price, the terms and the cancellation window are theirs. Official ticket offices are linked plainly, without any tracking on the link, whenever buying direct is the better move, which for several of the Cartagena tickets covered here it is.

How the site pays for itself

Tour and activity links on this site are affiliate links through GetYourGuide: book through one and the platform pays us a commission, at the same price you would have paid going there yourself. Hotel links on where to stay in Cartagena run through Stay22, which forwards you to Booking.com on the same terms. That pays for the research and buys nothing else, not placement, not a rating, not the wording of a recommendation.

Where the official ticket office is cheaper or the only sensible option, the page says so even though that link earns nothing. The mechanics are set out on the affiliate disclosure page.

Corrections

Museum hours in Cartagena change for holidays and festivals, boat charges at the pier move without notice and admission prices rise every year. If a number here is out of date, write to us with what you found and when you were there. A corrected figure is worth more than a defended one.