Plaza de San Diego, Cartagena: Our Square, and How to Use It
By Townhouse Cartagena ·
Quick answer
Plaza de San Diego is a small square in the northern corner of Cartagena's walled city, ringed with restaurant tables that fill up after dark. Come around 6pm if you want a table outside without waiting, eat ceviche at La Cevichería on Calle Stuart just off the square, then walk five minutes north to Las Bóvedas, the 23 vaulted storerooms built into the city wall that now sell handicrafts. We live on this square: we're on Carrera 7 in San Diego, and our rooftop is open till midnight if you'd rather drink above it than on it.
The streets around Plaza de San Diego, in the north of the walled city. · Photo by Ronin on Unsplash
Plaza de San Diego is the square we walk across every day. It sits in the northern end of the walled city, small enough to cross in about thirty seconds, and it's one of the few plazas in the Centro Histórico where the whole point is sitting down and eating something. Historians will tell you it was a market square long before it was a dinner reservation. What you'll notice first is the tables: restaurants push them out under the trees, and from roughly 7pm onward the square is full and loud in the good way.
We're in San Diego, on Carrera 7, so this is our neighbourhood rather than a day trip for us. Here's how we'd actually use the square and the streets around it, in the order we'd do it.
One honest warning before you plan your evening around it: this is a place people eat outside, at close quarters, with music. If you want colonial hush, aim for the streets one block west instead.
Plaza de San Diego itself
· Our square, in the north of the walled city · Free to sit on the steps, not free to sit at the tables
Go twice. Once around 5.30 or 6pm, when the light drops and you can still choose your table anywhere on the square, and once after 9pm, when it's packed and the point is the noise rather than the food. It's a small square, so it goes from empty to full fast. If you're a group of more than four on a Friday, ask a restaurant to hold you a table earlier in the day rather than turning up and hoping.
La Cevichería, Calle Stuart 7-14
· Just off the square, under a minute's walk · Mid to high for Cartagena; a plate of ceviche and a beer is not a cheap lunch
The seafood place people mean when they say they ate on Plaza de San Diego. It's been there since before the Old Town filled up with new restaurants, and the ceviche is the reason to go rather than anything more elaborate on the menu. Small room, small terrace, so lunch is an easier reservation than dinner. Listed hours run from lunchtime through to late evening, but it's popular enough that walking in at 8pm on a Saturday usually means a wait.
Las Bóvedas
· About five minutes' walk north from the square, at the top of the walls · Free to walk through; haggling expected in the shops
Twenty-three vaulted storerooms built into the city wall, behind an unmissable yellow facade, now filled with handicraft and souvenir stalls: hammocks, paintings, straw hats. It's touristy and we won't pretend otherwise, but it's the one souvenir stop where you're also standing inside the fortifications. Buy here if you want a hammock, skip it if you want a quiet browse, and walk up onto the wall directly above the vaults afterwards for the view over the water.
The walls above San Diego
· Two to three minutes from the square, straight up the ramp at the northern end · Free
The stretch of Las Murallas nearest us is the least crowded piece of the walls, because most people start their wall walk down by the clock tower and run out of energy long before they get here. Go up before dinner. It's the best half hour on the square's doorstep and it costs nothing.
Our rooftop, Carrera 7
· In San Diego, on the square's block · Rooftop pool day pass is €25 for two
If you want the neighbourhood from above instead of at table height, come up to ours. It's open till midnight, children are welcome until 8pm and after that it's adults only, and locals get 15% off up here too, so expect real company at sunset rather than a room of hotel guests looking at each other. Members Only kicks off around 9 on Friday and Saturday and it gets loud. That's the point.
