The 19 Best Places to Drink and Stay in Cartagena

1. The 50 #11 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Three colonial mansions stitched together around a 17th-century aqueduct, Casa San Agustin is a boutique hotel sitting squarely inside Cartagena's old walled city. Stone gargoyles, Renaissance frescoes, and four-poster beds share space with Frette linens and walk-in closets. The antique armoire is strictly decorative. Some rooms have wooden balconies for watching the street theater below; the top suites add private terraces with plunge pools. It holds a Michelin Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A converted 17th-century convent on Plaza San Diego, the Santa Clara is the kind of hotel that makes other hotels feel a little apologetic. Original ceiling beams, a courtyard that stops conversation, and suites named for Botero and Olga de Amaral set the tone. Gabriel García Márquez reportedly drew inspiration here, which either burnishes the legend or explains the room rates. The pool, Turkish bath, and day trips to a private island keep you thoroughly occupied.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A 40-minute boat ride from Cartagena is the fastest way to reach a beach Colombia's Caribbean coast rarely offers: a quiet private cove on Isla Barú, where this LEED-certified luxury resort sits with four infinity pools, a full spa, and three restaurants running French-inflected Caribbean food. Rooms come with sea-view balconies; upper suites add Jacuzzis and butler service. Most guests, once they arrive, don't leave, which the staff seems to have planned for.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Eight palm trees grow in the central courtyard, tall enough to sway over the old arches and tropical enough to make you feel the building is one slow season from being reclaimed by the jungle. This eleven-room colonial hotel in Cartagena's walled city holds a Michelin Guide 2 Keys distinction and leans into antique furnishings and palatially high ceilings rather than smart-home gadgets. Santo Domingo Square is a short walk out the door.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Latin America & Caribbean
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A Four Seasons spread across a collection of restored colonial landmarks in Getsemaní, with tropical gardens, sea views, and eight restaurants and bars to choose from, including one inside a 1920s building designed by a French architect. Two rooftop pools, a spa, fitness classes, and a hair salon round things out. The neighborhood outside is one of Cartagena's most interesting, and the hotel will happily arrange ways to see it for you.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
2. The 50 2025 · Most Admired Hotel Group Award

Eight suites in a restored colonial manor house on Calle del Cuartel, tucked inside Cartagena's walled old town. The name comes from the four-leaf-clover motif carved into Spanish Colonial facades all over the neighborhood, and the building fits right in. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. A pool and hot tub feel almost improbable at this scale, and the intimate size does the work that no amenity list quite can.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The plunge pool in the central courtyard has been cooling people down since the 1500s, which puts the renovation in perspective. This seven-room boutique hotel occupies one of Cartagena's oldest stone houses, right inside the historic walled city, and the restoration kept the colonial bones while adding the kind of furniture and amenities that make a long stay comfortable. Small, calm, and selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A former Carthusian monastery inside the old walled city, Casa La Cartujita is a seven-room boutique hotel where heavy wooden doors and whitewashed walls share space with mid-century modern pieces and L'Occitane in the bathrooms. The rooftop terrace with its plunge pool is the obvious place to land after a day out in Cartagena, particularly if someone is handing you a Coco Loco. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A former convent turned luxury hotel in Cartagena's old town, where the colonial bones have been kept and the thread count raised to 600. Rooms split between the historic and 20th-century wings are quietly plush, with marble baths and views that go either to sea or back over the rooftops. Neither direction disappoints, though the rooftop pool, with its full 360-degree panorama of the city, makes a strong argument for skipping the room entirely.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A Spanish Colonial building in Getsemaní, the neighborhood just outside Cartagena's walled city that everyone keeps saying is having a moment, houses this boutique hotel where the bones are centuries old and the furniture can't decide which era it belongs to. Rooms face either an interior courtyard or the street, and the restaurant, Clero, mixes Colombian, Caribbean, and Japanese influences on the same menu without apology.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A colonial residence from the 1600s with timbered ceilings and a rooftop pool that feels quietly out of place in the best way. This 12-room boutique hotel in Cartagena's historic center was designed by its owner, so the blend of contemporary and colonial never looks accidental. Staff will point you toward the city's restaurants, but book the whole house and a private chef appears. The Michelin Guide has selected it among its hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A 28-room boutique hotel a short walk from the Plaza de Santo Domingo, where colonial stone archways and a quiet inner courtyard do most of the heavy lifting before you've even checked in. The indoor pool and rooftop terrace stay genuinely calm at this scale. There's an on-site restaurant serving Japanese-Peruvian cuisine, which is either a welcome curveball or a reason to wander the old town for sancocho.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

An eight-room adults-only boutique hotel in a Spanish Colonial manor house in Cartagena's historic center, where the rooftop pool and terrace cocktail bar stay mercifully quiet because sixteen guests can only spread so thin. Original flooring and antique furnishings mix with the occasional bright wallpaper, and balconies face the old city. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels. No restaurant, which keeps the mood intact and sends you into one of Colombia's great dining neighborhoods.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Behind a whitewashed Colonial façade in Cartagena's old walled city, the Movich runs thoroughly contemporary inside, with clean modern lines, bright bathrooms, and the occasional exposed stone wall reminding you that the bones predate the flat screens. The rooftop pool and bar, with the old city's rooftops spread below, is where guests tend to lose track of the afternoon. A seafood restaurant and 24-hour room service mean you have no excuse not to explore.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel in Getsemaní, the Cartagena neighborhood where the street art outpaces the tourist maps, OSH keeps its cool with a pool courtyard made for lingering and a rooftop bar that scans the whole city. The restaurant turns Colombian classics through Italian and Asian lenses, though the neighborhood outside offers its own spirited argument for dinner elsewhere. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Twenty minutes by boat from Cartagena, this eleven-room boutique hotel on Tierra Bomba takes its cues from south-of-France beach clubs: rosé, a DJ spinning afro-latino beats, and a turquoise-tiled pool ringed by sunbeds. After dark the party clears out and the place turns quietly yours. Rooms come with private terraces, many with hammocks and plunge pools, and there's a PADI scuba center for the coral reef just offshore.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

You arrive by boat from Cartagena, which is itself half the point. Hotel Las Islas is a thatched-bungalow resort on the island of Barú, inside a national park, where the rooms either hang in the tree canopy or open directly onto the Caribbean. The bungalows run generous and come with Hermès bath products, because nature immersion and five-star comfort are apparently not mutually exclusive. Snorkeling, diving, and kayaking fill the hours the hammock doesn't.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels