Salamina travel guide: Best things to do and visit (2025)

We discovered Salamina on an itinerary through the beautiful villages of the coffee region. And we can safely say that Salamina is one of the most beautiful villages in this region. It’s a real favorite!

We have fond memories of Salamina, where we met Martin, a character like no other, one of those who leave their mark on a trip, and those who leave their mark altogether.

We tell you all about it in our post, and much more besides, as you’ll find all our advice on the must-sees when visiting Salamina, a pretty village in the Caldas region on the road between Manizales and Medellín.

Disclaimer: we apologize in advance for any grammatical or syntactic errors, as our native language is not English (we're a Colombian-French couple), so we hope you'll forgive us and still enjoy the information we share with you! Please note that all the information on our blog is based on our own experience, and is checked and updated regularly.

Contents

1. The adventure to Salamina

2. A walk through the streets of Salamina

3. Salamina off the beaten track

4. Best things to do in Salamina

5. Alto bonito, your homestay in Salamina

6. Tour of Salamina with a local guide

7. Where to stay in Salamina

8. How to get to Salamina

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General information Salamina

Nickname: La Ciudad Luz
Founded: 1825
People: Salamineños
Region: Andes
County: Caldas
Population: 10.000
Average altitude: 1822m
Climate: temperate and humid
Average temperature : 20°C
Rainy season: March to May, Sept. to Nov.

Visit Salamina travel guide: Best things to do in this beautiful village of the coffee region

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The adventure to Salamina

Beautiful village in the coffee region

To begin with, the journey to Salamina wasn’t easy… We’d just arrived from Salento, where we’d been lucky enough to visit the sublime Carbonera Valley. We took a cab to Pereira, then a bus to Manizales, where we were told that the road to Salamina had collapsed…

As is often the case in this region, when it rains a lot, landslides wreak havoc on the roads. Workers are working to restore the road, but for the moment it’s cut off. We look at the pictures on the internet, and indeed… half the road has collapsed.

We’re given a solution: take the bus to the landslide, walk over, and find a solution on the spot to continue. We’re told that there will be cabs or buses waiting for us on the other side. It’s a bit like double or nothing, but since there are so many of us on the bus, we decide to give it a try and see what happens.

Luckily, by the time we reach the damage, the roadworks have just finished and the bus is supposed to be able to get through. The problem is that everyone’s freaking out: a road that’s collapsed, a bus with 30 people in it = everyone wants to get off, walk over and have the driver pick us up after the landslide.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to do! We all climb back into the bus with our feet full of mud, the driver is furious, but we’ll carry on without any problems to our destination!

Welcome to Salamina!

Favorite place to stay

Contact Martin to stay in Salamina

A walk through the streets of Salamina

Caldas heritage village

We’re finally on the streets of Salamina! We have an appointment with Cathy, our partner in Medellín , who also offers tours of the villages in the region (Jerico, Santa Fe de Antioquia, Guatape, Aguadas, Salamina…).

Cathy and I haven’t seen each other for a long time, so when we decided to come to Salamina, we thought it would be nice to see each other and take the opportunity to discover the village with a guide.

Salamina’s history has earned it a place on Colombia’s list of heritage villages. We wander through the streets of Salamina, discovering what has made the village famous throughout the ages: its architecture!

Master Eliseo Tangarife

Salamina is of particular interest because it is home tothe work of master craftsman Eliseo Tangarife, considered the father of ornamentation in the Antioquia region.

The village streets are full of beautiful 19th-century houses typical of the Paisa colonization (inhabitants of the coffee region). You’ll admire the exceptional woodwork, both inside and out, beautiful barred windows, wooden balconies and doors adorned with carved figurines.

In Salamina’s oldest houses, relics of Maestro Tangarife’s work can still be found, including sublime “dining room doors” like the one in the century-old house we were lucky enough to enter. A sublime colonial house where Mrs. Consuelo Mejia, its owner, welcomed us. She has carefully preserved all the relics of her wealthy Salamineña family, taking us on a journey through time.

Many poets, painters and musicians were born in Salamina, which is why it’s nicknamed the City of Light! It’s a city that has seen a splendor that has left its mark: wealthy families traveled extensively in Europe, bringing back many ideas and influences for the city, art and culture.

Que faire à Salamina, un des plus beaux villages de la région du café

Paisa culture

We head for the Salamina cemetery, one of the village’s major architectural works. But it’s the building opposite that catches our eye. A building belonging to the church, where poor old people live in tiny rooms overlooking the street. In Salamina, despite its small village feel, you can sense the class differences between the streets and neighborhoods, just as you would in a big city.

Caldas is a particularly conservative department, and it shows. A stronghold of the Catholic religion, certain forgotten traditions of the paisa culture are still alive and well. You could say that Caldas is the soul of Paisa culture, perhaps even more so than in Antioquia. And Salamina is a perfect example.

La Última Lágrima

On our way up Rue du Cimetière, we stop at an unusual tienda: “la Ultima Lagrima” (the last tear). Why this name and why stop here? We go and talk to the manager, who’s not short of stories to tell. Don Pedro Nel is a real character.

Don Pedro Nel has been Salamina’s obituary writer for 12 years. In a small notebook, he writes down precisely the name of the deceased and the date of the funeral procession, which is bound to stop in front of his shop – the last stop, the “last tear” for the deceased before he reaches his final resting place in the nearby cemetery!

Casa de la cultura

We end our visit at the Casa de la cultura, one of Salamina’s most beautiful houses, now transformed into a small museum, which also bears witness to the work of the inescapable Tangarife. At the entrance, we are greeted by the face of the devil carved in wood, then we enter a sublime patio and its immense staircase leading to the balustrades of the second floor, where the exhibition rooms are located.

There are a few relics from the past, pre-Hispanic ceramics, traditional tools, etc., but above all, a room filled with photographs of Salamina from all eras, some dating back to the early 20th century.

It was a real thrill for us to see Salamina’s life unfold on the walls. Slices of life frozen on film over the decades that tell more than all the story books.

These photos are a real gem – let’s hope they keep them accessible to the public!

On our way out, across the road on the village’s main street, we enter “El Polo”, Salamina’s legendary bar, to sample the unmissable local specialty: steamed eggs! In this bar, as if frozen in time, the coffee machine’s steam nozzle is used to cook eggs!

The other specialty of the house is the Macana, a very sweet dessert/drink made with milk, cracker cookies, sugar and butter, all steamed with the same coffee machine and sprinkled with cinnamon at the end. The locals love it, but we’re still rather skeptical, so it’s up to you to try it…

Good to know

Steamed eggs

The story goes that it was Salamina resident Don José Luis Ballesteros who invented “steamed eggs”, a discovery that would over time become part of the gastronomic heritage of Salamina and the region!

In the 1970s, José Luis saw a new coffee machine arrive in the village. He decided to try cooking the eggs with the steam nozzle used to make cappuccinos. The result was beyond his expectations: perfectly cooked eggs with a light, creamy texture, a total success. So much so, that the recipe was adopted and cafés began offering steamed eggs to the people of Salamina. It was a great success, and the rest is history!

Steamed eggs are prepared with salt, butter and ham or cheese, depending on taste. The waiter breaks an egg into a large coffee cup, positions the coffee machine’s steam nozzle as if to make a cappuccino, and by manipulating the steam outlet, the eggs swell and are cooked – it takes about a minute.

Favorite place to stay

Contact Martin to stay in Salamina

Salamina off the beaten track

Colombian heritage village

Later in the week, we’ll be discovering other facets of Salamina in the company of Martin, our host where we’re staying in the hills above Salamina (more about him later in the post).

Martin is a pure product of the region, a lover of his native land who wouldn’t leave his village for the world. We meet him in front of a workshop where fique and sheep’s wool are worked. It’s opposite the ultima lagrima bar mentioned above.

We meet Doña Esther, who came to Salamina as a child from her native Ecuador to become, 50 years later, the head instructor of this workshop financed by the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in Salamina.

This workshop/school focuses on teaching craft processes around wool and fique. Training is free and the doors are open to all, and rugs, doormats, ruanas, shawls, cushions, bedspreads and blankets are made

A little wary at first, Doña Esther explains the manufacturing process and seeing our interest the conversation takes shape, we tour her entire workshop and end up good friends! Of course, we buy one of her carpets to thank her for spending time with us.

We then set off for the Salamina covered market.

Located in the “hot” part of the village, the covered market is the popular heart of Salamina. It’s the entrance to the village, where buses drop off travellers, cabs wait for the needy, and in the evenings, the district is ablaze with the sound of night bars, workers come to drink their weekly pay, prostitutes do their work – it’s the life of rural Colombian villages that lives on.

Martin takes us to a bouiboui where we’d probably never have dared to sit down on our own. After a hearty meal, it’s the end of the market, the stalls close one after the other and we head for a part of the village of Salamina, far from the splendor of the large middle-class houses of Tangarifesque Salamina.

As we make our way back towards the center, we come across a couple of little old men sitting in front of their door, their fighting cocks tied to the stair railings. A discussion ensues about the persistence of cockfighting in the village. They just raise them and sell them to the followers of this tradition.

As in the big cities, the “faubourgs” of Salamina show a different face of the village. A more humble and less glamorous face, perhaps, but one that we still feel it’s important to give a place to, a very real existence of what Colombia is in all its complexity.