Comuna 13 Free Tour

Comuna 13, also known as San Javier, was in the 1990s and early 2000s one of the most violent urban areas in the world — home ground for gangs, paramilitaries and guerrilla militias, and the site of Operación Orión, a large-scale military operation in 2002 that retook the hillside from armed groups at a heavy human cost. What happened afterward is the reason travelers now come here: residents turned to hip-hop, breakdance and street art to reclaim public space, and in 2011 the city built a series of outdoor escalators up the steepest part of the hillside, cutting a roughly 35-minute climb to about six.

Your guide, often a resident of the comuna, leads you up through those escalators and a maze of alleyways covered in murals that retell the neighborhood's history — from the violence to the community organizing that followed. Expect stops with local artists and vendors, sweeping views over the Aburrá Valley, and an honest, first-hand account of what changed and what the transformation still leaves unresolved.