Medellin

Medellín is the capital of Antioquia, a city in the Aburrá Valley of the Andes in northwestern Colombia. Its mild weather all year gave it the nickname City of Eternal Spring. Each August the Feria de las Flores fills its streets with silleteros, flower growers from the nearby hills who carry large flower arrangements on wooden frames on their backs.

The Spanish settled the valley in 1616 under the name San Lorenzo de Aburrá. The town received its charter in 1675 as the Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Medellín, named after the Count of Medellín, a town in Extremadura in Spain. It replaced Santa Fe de Antioquia as the capital of the province in the 1820s. Gold mining and later coffee paid for its growth, and in the early 20th century the city opened textile mills that made it a center of Colombian industry. In the 1990s it opened the first metro in Colombia, later joined by Metrocable gondolas that climb the steep slopes of the valley.

Grupo Nutresa, based in Medellín, makes Jet chocolates, Colcafé coffee and Zenú sausages. Postobón, founded in the city, bottles soft drinks such as Manzana Postobón and Colombiana. Empresas Públicas de Medellín, owned by the city, supplies electricity, water and gas and builds hydroelectric dams across Antioquia.

Plaza Botero holds 23 large bronze sculptures by Fernando Botero, the painter and sculptor born in the city, who gave them to his hometown. The Museo de Antioquia, beside the square, keeps a large collection of his paintings along with works of Colombian artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Atlético Nacional, founded in the city, won the Copa Libertadores in the 1980s and again in the 2010s.