What the door knockers in Colombia’s Cartagena de Indias tell us about the city’s history
Add beautiful door knockers to your list of reasons to visit Cartagena de Indias in Colombia.

San Felipe de Barajas Castle, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Photo by Gabriela García Calderón.
The city of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia is known for its impressive city walls, built during the Spanish colonial period to protect it from attacks by pirates and privateers. The city has one of the mightiest fortresses in South America and the Caribbean.

Door at the historic center of Cartagena de Indias. Photo by Gabriela García Calderón.
You could almost say that Cartagena de Indias is an “open-air museum full of secrets.” Some of those secrets are concealed by what is another hallmark of the city: its door knockers, or the “old metal doorbells that many doors had […] before electric doorbells existed,” according to travel blog El rincón de Sele. The entry says:
Each design had a meaning, as the website Fuscia notes:

Door at the historic center of Cartagena de Indias. The metal buttons is a sign of social class. Photo by Gabriela Garcia Calderón.
The door knockers were made by expert forgers according to the requests of the house owners. Today, descendants of those forgers are still in the business, such as Jesús Acevedo Pombo, from the Cartagenero neighborhood of Getsemaní. A 2013 article by a local newspaper told his story:
On Twitter, it’s possible to find photos of some of the door knockers:
Door knockers of Cartagena. The beauty of small things.
The city with the best door knockers in South America: Cartagena de Indias (photos from Instagram).
The travel and curiosity website Atlas Obscura has an entry about Cartagena’s door knockers too:
Now you have one more reason to visit Cartagena de Indias!