If you take you a few kilometers walk from Santa Marta, you can find yourself in the mysterious ancient city named Ciudad Perdida, which translates as «Lost City». It isn’t easy to get to its area: you will have to cross a few rivers, clamber over steep hills, descend from them, and go up a long stone staircase, counting 1 200 steps. And only at the end of this long journey, you will find a secret entrance to the stunning city in the impenetrable jungles of Colombia in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And perhaps, the world would have never known of the existence of this ancient Indian settlement, if in 1972, treasure-hunters didn’t find it and didn’t start selling the findings from the antique city on the black market. The ancient objects of pure gold quickly attracted the local government’s attention, and soon the rumor about the lost city spread across the world. Later, it became known that the locals were aware of its existence for a long time but kept it in secret. Today, the descendants of the Indian people of the Tairona culture conduct tours in the ancient city and tell everyone about its rich history.

According to archaeological research, Ciudad Perdida was founded in the 8th century, and it is much older than the famous Peruvian Machu Picchu. The Indians call it «Teyuna» and believe that here the ancestors of the Tairona culture lived. At the city’s prime years, its population counted more 8 000 citizens who left it when the Spanish conquerors came to these lands.

Currently, Ciudad Perdida looks the same as many centuries ago. There were no deep excavations because the locals didn’t allow any interference in the sacred lands of their ancestors. It consists of 169 small terraces that hosted round houses. Some of them were recreated according to the testimony of the locals of the Indian tribes. Here, you can see several squares and roads paved with stone and former dwellings of shamans, located on the highest terraces.