Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Medellín
The Metrocable and Parque Arví in six hours
The cable car over the hillside barrios, the library park and the cloud forest at the top of the line.
The three-hour route covers the centre and Comuna 13. This one rides the system that changed the city: a cable car built in 2004 not as a tourist ride but as public transport for the barrios up the valley sides, on the same ticket as the metro. At the top of the second line is a 16,000-hectare cloud forest with pre-Hispanic paths still running through it.
The route, stop by stop
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Metrocable Line K
Arrive by metro from the previous stop
Opened 2004 and the first of its kind used as mass transit. Twenty minutes over the rooftops of Santo Domingo, on a normal metro fare.
40 min here Walk here → -
Parque Biblioteca España
Three black rock-like volumes on the hillside at Santo Domingo, built in 2007 as part of the same social-urbanism programme. Closed for structural repairs at times; check before counting on the inside.
35 min here Walk here → -
Parque Arví
Arrive by metro from the previous stop
Sixteen thousand hectares of cloud forest at the top of Line L, with pre-Hispanic stone paths through it and a produce market at the entrance. Take a jacket; it is ten degrees cooler than the valley.
120 min here Walk here → -
Pueblito Paisa
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
A replica Antioquian village on top of Cerro Nutibara, and the best 360 of the valley and how steeply it rises.
45 min here Walk here → -
Parque El Poblado
Arrive by metro from the previous stop
The original village square El Poblado grew from, with the 1616 chapel on one side. The nightlife is a few blocks uphill around Parque Lleras.
35 min here Walk here → -
Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín
A steel-clad extension bolted onto a 1930s steel mill in Ciudad del Río, about half an hour on foot down the valley. The Débora Arango collection is the reason to come.
More in Medellín
Every walking route in Medellín, or the full Medellín guide for where to stay and what a day costs.