Cartagena Cultural Center

The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Cartagena has three venues located in the walled city: the Bartolomé Calvo Library, the Zenú Gold Museum, and the Banco de la República building, where users can enjoy an open library with more than seventy thousand items. The center provides spaces conducive to reading, research, and contact with various cultural events.

In addition, the Cartagena community can access all the services of the Banco de la República Library Network, including workshops, conferences, traveling book box loans, access to bibliographic and audiovisual material, and a wide range of other activities offered with the support of and in coordination with important institutions in the city, such as the Observatory of the Colombian Caribbean, the University of Cartagena, the International Film Festival, Bolivar University Institution of Fine Arts and Sciences, Adolfo Mejia Theatre, the District and Departmental Education Secretariats, the Cartagena Institute of Heritage and Culture, and many others.

Cartagena residents and tourists can enjoy various permanent exhibitions of art and archaeology, the national concert season and all the technical and research capacity that characterizes Banco de la República’s cultural network, thus contributing to the region’s consolidation and cultural strengthening.

We invite you to read Banco de la República in Cartagena, by María Beatriz García, Director of the Banco de la República Cultural Center in Cartagena »

History

In the 1970s, with the financial support of Banco de la República and Proexpo, modernization efforts were carried out in Cartagena to help the city's tourist and cultural infrastructure. This is how the idea for buildings such as the Convention Center was conceived. Other projects were also financed, including the construction of House of Illustrious Guests, the Gold Museum, the Guillermo Piñeres Botanical Garden, the restoration of the Heredia Theater and the Bartolomé Calvo Library, the latter resulting from the initiative of Governor Haroldo Calvo Núñez.

In 1979, the Banco de la República was already interested in taking over the old Departmental Library and took it on loan for 50 years in 1980. Since then, the library has been housed in the old Banco de Bolívar building, built in 1907 by the German architect Nicolás Samer. The new library was inaugurated on October 30, 1981.

In dialogue with the Gold Museum's decentralization policies, the Zenú Gold Museum was created during the 1980s, an initiative supported by Rafael Gama Quijano, general manager of Banco de la República. In 1980, the central bank presented the project for its new building in Cartagena and the remodeling of the existing one, because although the origins of the house go back to the 17th and 18th centuries, reforms have taken place in the last thirty years. The Zenú Gold Museum was inaugurated on March 27, 1982, with an exhibition of 1700 pieces from different pre-Columbian cultures around the country.

From the end of the 20th century until today, Banco de la República has supported widely acclaimed international events such as the Hay Festival, the International Music Festival, and the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival. It has also carried out an intensive program of activities in the city's neighborhoods via workshops, and has organized events of great significance such as symposiums on the history of Cartagena with the participation of national and foreign specialists, international concerts with well-known musicians, seminars on anthropology and archaeology at the Zenú Gold Museum, and many other activities.

Brief history of Banco de la República in Cartagena

From November 1923 to December 1929, the offices of Banco de la República in Cartagena operated from two rented premises: the first one was located on the corner of Calle Estanco del Tabaco and Calle de la Estrella, and the second on Calle Santos de Piedra (Calle Ribón), in front of the city's cathedral. The first agents of Banco de la República in Cartagena were Enrique J. Arrázola, Fulgencio Lequerica Vélez, and Domingo de la Espriella, and Carlos C. Calvo was appointed as deputy for the first one.

In 1927, efforts were made to buy some houses on the corner of Portal de los Escribanos and Calle Landrinal, in front of Bolivar Park, chosen as the site for the Banco de la República building in Cartagena. That year, the central bank acquired three properties in the area, allowing it to construct an elegant and comfortable building with better space distribution. In September 1927, the Belgian architect Joseph Martens was hired to draw up the plans and build Banco de la República’s building in Cartagena, and in January 1928 he took over the works. Martens—one of the most outstanding figures of Republican architecture in Colombia, with notable works including the National Palace in Cali and the Chiquinquirá, Zipaquirá, and Palmira railroad stations—also built Banco de la República’s buildings in Cartagena, Manizales, and Bucaramanga, among others.

As recommended by Martens, ornamentation of the building’s exterior was commissioned to the Italian architect Severino Leone. This architect and sculptor was well known among his colleagues in Cartagena from the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, he had introduced new construction techniques to the city, such as cement molds with metal reinforcement. With this system, significant progress was made in prefabricated elements such as balusters, capitals, columns, and cornices at low cost. Due to the shortage of national products, it was necessary to import almost all of the materials for the construction of the building. The steel structure of the building and the iron doors and windows on the second floor were brought from Belgium, for example. The elevator, safe, vault doors, bronze grids, as well as the iron windows and grates for the telling counters came from the United States. The marble was brought from Italy; from Holland, the gray cement; from France, the white cement; and from England, the control clock. Cartagena supplied the tiles and the carpentry in red cedar wood from Sinú.

The construction was completed in December 1929 and the Banco de la República moved its offices in January 1930. The building is the oldest still in operation as a branch of the central bank, since the other buildings, built or acquired between 1923 and 1930 in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, and Manizales, were subsequently sold.

Martens designed and built a three-story Republican-style building with a total height of 15.6 meters and 28 offices. On the second floor, a large lobby was designed, with Carrara marble floors and countertops and a staircase made of the same material. For the front of the building, on the Portal de los Escribanos, the architect designed seven semicircular arches, as well as three iron doors and three windows; on Calle Landrinal, one door and eight windows of the same material.

The building's façade is composed of archways, fluted columns with capitals, iron doors and windows on the second floor, wooden windows on the other two floors, and a cornice. The four iron doors and eleven windows installed on the second floor were imported from Belgium. The property also has two inner courtyards on the second floor, which provide harmony, ventilation, and light. The wide corridors and offices on the second and third floors were designed around these two central courtyards, adorned with columns and balustrades, the latter prefabricated in cement along with the building's ornamentation.

Half a century after its construction, between 1984 and 1988, the building underwent a complete renovation, with the purpose of adapting the three floors for the central bank’s offices as well as complementary functions. Then, between 1997 and 2001, a second comprehensive renovation was carried out to expand and restore the building. This intervention recovered original aspects of the building such as the public service lobby, the bronze windows, the marble stairs, and the decorative tiles, among other things. The restored and expanded building was re-inaugurated on June 27, 2001, with the presence of Executive Manager Gerardo Hernandez, Deputy Administrative Manager Nestor Plazas, Branch Manager Adolfo Meisel, as well as officials from the Cartagena branch and special guests.

The Banco de la República has been operating in the Cartagena building without interruption for more than seven decades. The building’s history and architectural virtues have combined to make it a harmonious component of the urban landscape of Cartagena’s walled city, as well as part of the collective memory of the people of Cartagena.