MANIZALES

Manizales is a city of the Colombian Coffee Cultural Landscape. World Heritage.  UNESCO

Adriana Gómez Alzate[1]

Manizales is a middle mountain city of the Colombian coffee zone. It is located in the tropical Andine region that is one of the most biodiverse regions of the world and it is one of the 25 priority regions for conserving life on the earth.

The city presents a complex urban plotting, which has evolved in response to an abrupt topography, within a natural environment of great value in its travels, the built is integrated to the natural setting a diverse and stimulating urban landscape.

The scenery quality surrounding the city is mainly due to climate variability ranging from climate High Mountain with perpetual snow to valley climate. The lands are mostly cultivated with coffee. These landscapes have a great wealth in relief shapes and very deep mountains planes. The city altitude of 2150 meters above sea level allows a fast accessibility to climates that can vary within a 30 kilometers radius between zero and forty degrees Celsius and heights between 5000 and 150 meters above sea level.

Since the declaration of the Colombian Coffee Culture Landscape as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO [2], the region that includes the Departments of Caldas, Quindío, Risaralda and Norte del Valle, also called Coffee Axis Ecoregion, has been included and recognized in the list of the patrimonial assets of the world, which enables the region to put its value as a cultural and natural interest.

The Manizales historic and traditional downtown has an important architectural and landscape heritage and it is an alive center and of intense public activity. Its cold mountain climate with a mostly clouded atmosphere offers a recollection environment. The Manizales traditional architecture is sober and homogeneous; it is a typical architecture of the Antioquia Colonization with bahareque houses of white walls in lime and carpentry of carved wood. Furthermore, Manizales has an important urban and architectonic heritage representative of the Republican period that is considered to be the major architectural set of country Republican architecture

On the other hand, Manizales is the city with the largest number of artistic training institutions (visual arts, dance, theater, literature and music) registered per million inhabitants in the country (according to the 2008 Competitiveness Council), and the Coffee Axis is renowned as a cultural and university region for its more than 100,000 students, 14 universities, 12 research and development centers and the largest computational bioinformatics center for research and development in Latin America.