MUST SEE: CIUDAD PERDIDA

(LOST CITY) COLUMBIA 🇨🇴

Ciudad Perdida consists of a series of 169 terraces carved into the mountainside, a net of tiled roads and several small circular plazas.

Hidden deep in the jungle of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia sits an archeological site called Ciudad Perdida, the “Lost City”.  Built by the Tairona people in 800AD predating Machu Pichu by over 600 years.  The Ciudad Perdida archaeological site only became an attraction after it was uncovered in the 1970s.

Los Sepúlveda was a small family of looters in Colombia; their story leads to the beginning of one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in modern times. The family went hunting in the forests of Colombia when they shot down a wild turkey. Upon retrieving the turkey, they noticed it had fallen on a piece of an exposed staircase. This staircase would lead them to find La Ciudad Perdida. For years after its discovery by the looters, “Treasures from the site, including gold figures and ceramics, soon began to appear on the black market”  Archeologists were alerted to these black market treasures and managed to, with the help of indigenous people who protect their ancestral site, trace themselves to the area in 1976.  The area was researched and reconstructed over the next 6 years.

Although La Ciudad Perdida is one of the most impressive sites, it’s not alone, only about 30-40% of the sites in the Sierra Nevada region have actually been explored. Thanks to recent widespread access, more and more of these sites are being discovered, and the search for new lost cities has just begun.

Ciudad Perdida was probably the region’s political and manufacturing center on the Buritaca River and may have housed 2,000–8,000 people.

Named Teyuna by the Tairona but dubbed Ciudad Perdida upon rediscovery, the ancient wonder is perched on hillsides and tucked into a dense rainforest.