Start with the room you're sleeping in
Our rooms were painted by local artists, not chosen from a decorator's mood board. That's the whole idea here: the paint runs onto the doors and into the bathrooms, each room is its own thing, and nobody is going to ask you to speak quietly near it. An art hotel, but not the stuffy, silent, white-walls kind. We're on Carrera 7 in San Diego, the northern quarter of the walled city, and the rest of this page is where we'd send you once you've put your bag down.
A word on how to do art in this city: distances are tiny and the heat is not. Two stops in a morning is a good day. Three is ambitious. Go early, break for lunch, and save the murals for the cooler end of the afternoon.
Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena
This is the one museum to do if you only do one. It sits on Plaza San Pedro Claver, diagonally across from the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver in the southern half of the walled city, in an old customs building on the plaza. The collection leans Colombian and Caribbean, with work by artists from this coast, and it's small: an hour is plenty, which is exactly why it's a good first stop before the day heats up. Opening hours have moved around over the years, so check the museum's own site the morning you go rather than trusting a listing.
From us it's roughly a fifteen-minute walk south through the Centro Histórico, and the walk is half the visit.
Museo del Oro Zenú
Goldwork made by the Zenú people long before the Spanish arrived, displayed in a small museum inside the walled city. It's the counterweight to the modern-art morning and it's the one people skip and then regret, partly because it's compact enough to do properly in forty minutes. Go when you want something cool, indoors and quiet in the middle of the day.
Las Bóvedas, if you want to buy something
Twenty-three vaulted storerooms built into the city wall, behind a yellow facade you can't miss, now stalls selling paintings, hammocks and straw hats. It's about five minutes' walk north from us, at the top of the walls. This is where the art gets carried home: canvases of the walled city, of fruit sellers, of not much in particular, painted at speed and priced for haggling.
It's touristy, and we won't pretend otherwise. Go anyway, because you're shopping inside a fortification, then walk up onto the wall directly above the vaults for the view over the water. If you want a serious piece rather than a souvenir, this isn't the place.
Getsemaní's murals
The biggest art in Cartagena isn't in a museum. It's on the walls of Getsemaní, the neighbourhood just outside the walls, about fifteen to twenty minutes' walk south from us past Parque del Centenario. Whole facades, portraits, umbrellas strung over Calle de la Sierpe. It changes: murals get painted over, which is the point of them.
Go late afternoon, when the light is low and the streets have woken up, and stay for dinner rather than walking straight back. We've written the walk out properly in our Getsemaní guide.
Then come back and get a drink
Our rooftop is open till midnight, and it's the least reverent room in this whole page: locals get 15% off up here too, so expect real company at sunset, and Members Only kicks off around 9 on Friday and Saturday. It gets loud. Ask for whatever Chef Pedro is doing with the catch that day, look at the paint on your way down, and don't feel obliged to be solemn about any of it. Live Cartagena the way we do.