Tourist information | Corporación Parque de los Periodistas

Parque de los periodistas
Gabriel García Márquez

Entrance door to the Historic Center of Bogotá

Living History of the City

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, on July 24, 1883, the Temple built in his honor was inaugurated, the work of the Italian architect Pietro Cantini, who participated in the construction of the National Capitol and designed the National Theater, today, Teatro Colón. The site chosen for the work was the Centennial Park, located in the San Diego sector, designed by the same architect, later demolished to make way for the expansion of the Carrera Décima.

The temple was inspired by the Temple of Vesta, in Rome; the original statue was cast by the Desprey House in Paris, on a sketch by Alberto Urdaneta. The temple has a condor in its upper part, also the work of the Desprey House.

In 1940, given the growth of the City and the abandonment of its place of location, the National Government decided to move it to a separator of Carrera 7 with Calle 26, diagonal to the Church of San Diego. The original statue, which was only exhibited for one day, was moved to the Prospero Pinzón Park in the City of Tunja and, currently, was in the Plaza Mayor of that city and, finally, placed in the Bolivar Battalion, a place it currently occupies. It was replaced years later by a statue made by the Bogota painter and musician Ricardo Acevedo Bernal. In 1926, the Society of Improvements and Ornato commissioned Marco Tobón Mejía to build a new statue, which remained until 1958.

In 1958, it was decided to move it to the current location, in the so-called Parque de La Romana, which was renamed Parque de los Periodistas. In the work of transfer, several elements of the statue of Bolívar were damaged, so the Temple remained without a statue for 15 years. Finally, on May 26, 1973, the statue called "El Bolívar Orador", the work of Peruvian sculptor Gerardo Benítez, was placed.

The Environmental Axis

El The San Francisco River or Vicachá (in its original denomination), is born in the páramo of Cruz Verde and descends from the hill of Monserrate to Bogotá, to converge later with the San Agustín River, better known as Canal de los Comuneros. The Vicachá ("glow of the night" in chibcha) became the largest river in the region and marked the northern limit of it.

In the 1930s it was decided to channel it, and, on it, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quezada Avenue was built, in honor of the founder of the city, whose remains rest in the chapel of Santa Isabel de Hungría, in the Primada Cathedral of Bogotá.

Between 1999 and 2001, the city undertook the works of the so-called "Environmental Axis", which recovered part of the original course of the river; the project, under the design of the architects Rogelio Salmona and Luis Kopec, fixed the route of the road, with the river as the center of the landscape, surrounded by wax palms and spring peppers, native Colombian species.

Despite its name as a park, its space corresponds to a square, being a unifying and referent place of the city, with an environment of buildings that have been developed depending on the area.

There is news of the area, as a place of market and meeting of the inhabitants, since indigenous times and, from the eighteenth century, as a place of concentration and meeting. Towards the end of the nineteenth century there was on its southwestern side the Santander bridge, built on land of the Molino del Cubo, originally owned by the Jesuits and, later, the Nation.

Until 1940, it was known as La Romana and, for a time, it was given the name of park of (in) dependence, as a way of expressing an ideological left movement; Being a place of frequent meeting of journalists and writers, the Council of Bogotá decided the land currently occupied by the Colombian Academy of Language to the Circle of Journalists of Bogotá, with which the square was renamed Parque de los Periodistas.

The second article of Agreement 556 of June 18, 2014, issued by the Council of Bogotá, changed the name of the square again, naming it Gabriel García Márquez Journalists' Park, in homage to the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In the surroundings of the Park, we find emblematic buildings of great historical or cultural importance, such as the Colombian Academy of Language, the Continental Hotel, the Colombian Institute of Higher Education, the Bicentennial Tower, the Colombian American Institute or the French Alliance. It is access to the Historic Center of Bogotá and the Barrio La Candelaria. It has all kinds of services in its surroundings, such as the Las Aguas Transmilenio Station, the First Notary, prestigious restaurants, tourist information, hotels, supermarkets, bicycle rental station and, most importantly, has an unparalleled landscape, architectural and cultural environment.