Cafes to Work From in Cartagena's Old Town (and When to Give Up and Go Swimming)

By Townhouse Cartagena · October 14, 2026

Quick answer

The best coffee shops to work from in Cartagena's Old Town are Abaco Libros y Cafe, a bookshop cafe at Calle 36 #3-86 in El Centro, Epoca Cafe Bar in the Centro Historico, and, over in Getsemani, Libertario Coffee Roasters at Carrera 10 #30-14 and Cafe del Mural. All four are inside a twenty-minute walk of us in San Diego. Work the morning, because from about 1pm the heat wins and nobody in this city is productive; that's what the afternoon and our rooftop are for.

A laptop open on a wooden cafe table — Morning shift only. The afternoon belongs to the heat. · Photo by Paul Esch-Laurent on Unsplash

If you're bringing work to Cartagena, plan the day around the heat and not around your calendar. Mornings are for the laptop, afternoons are for water and shade, and evenings are for the reason you booked a trip to the Caribbean in the first place.

We're on Carrera 7 in San Diego, which puts the Centro cafes a few minutes' walk away and Getsemani, across Parque del Centenario, at roughly twenty. That's the whole geography of your working week. Four places below, what each one is actually like, and where they are.

Two honest warnings before you pick one. First, this is not a city of silent laptop libraries. Cafes here are rooms people talk in, so bring headphones and don't expect a co-working hush. Second, nowhere in the Old Town wants your laptop parked on a four-top through lunch service. Order properly, tip properly, leave before the tables fill.

And when the working day ends, come back and head up to the rooftop. It's open till midnight, adults only after 8pm, and locals get 15% off up here too, so expect real company at sunset. This is a place to stay that's also a place the city comes to.

Abaco Libros y Cafe

· El Centro, Calle 36 #3-86, roughly a 10-minute walk from us · Cafe prices, plus whatever book you inevitably buy

A bookshop that serves coffee rather than a cafe with a shelf of paperbacks, and the most pleasant room in the Old Town to sit and read a contract in. Dark wood, books to the ceiling, cool inside when the street isn't. It's small, which is the catch: this is a laptop-for-an-hour place, not a set-up-your-office-until-4pm place. Come at opening for a table, get through your email, buy the book.
Epoca Cafe Bar

· Centro Historico, about a 10-minute walk from us · Cafe prices

The one that keeps turning up on the lists Cartagena's remote workers actually keep, including the local wifi-checked roundups. It's a proper coffee bar in the Centro, so the espresso is the point and the working is tolerated rather than designed for. Best for a focused ninety minutes with headphones on. If you need to take a call, step outside or wait until you're back in your room.
Libertario Coffee Roasters

· Getsemani, Carrera 10 #30-14, about a 20-minute walk from us · Cafe prices

A roaster, so the coffee is the serious part and the room is built around it. This is the one to walk to when you want the working morning to feel like a change of scene rather than a chore, and the route out through Parque del Centenario into Getsemani is the best twenty minutes of walking in the city. Go early. Getsemani wakes up slowly, and you'll have the place to yourself before the street noise starts.
Cafe del Mural

· Getsemani, about a 20-minute walk from us · Cafe prices

Small, Getsemani to its bones, and better for a tasting and a break than for three hours of spreadsheets. Pair it with the street-art walk instead of the working day: coffee here, twenty minutes of murals, then back to the desk. If you only want one Getsemani coffee stop and you care about how the cup was made, make it this one.

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