Colombia · Departamento de Bolívar · Cartagena
El Cabrero, Cartagena — Area Guide & Where to Stay
El Cabrero is a Cartagena neighbourhood on a strip between the Caribbean Sea and El Cabrero lagoon, just outside the walled Old City.
About El Cabrero
Where to stay in El Cabrero
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
El Cabrero puts a bed between salt water and still water. Rooms on the seaward side face the Caribbean Sea, while those set back look over El Cabrero lagoon, and the walk southwest along the San Lucas and Santa Catalina defences reaches the walled Old City and the Cartagena Cathedral without a taxi. Marbella continues the shore northeast.
If you want the Old City on foot but not its noise around your window, this narrow neighbourhood answers that.
About El Cabrero
What are the main landmarks in El Cabrero?
El Cabrero holds no monument itself. The named stone begins over its southwestern edge, where the San Lucas and Santa Catalina defences close the walled Old City around the Cartagena Cathedral and the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver. Three collections sit in that same quarter, the Zenú Gold Museum, the Museo Naval del Caribe, and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena de Indias.
The Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas belongs to the wider city rather than to this shore.
What is the history of El Cabrero?
The walls came first. San Lucas and Santa Catalina were raised as defences for the walled city of Cartagena de Indias, and everything in El Cabrero stands outside that line rather than within it. The neighbourhood therefore reads as the newer ground, a strip taken up between the Caribbean Sea and El Cabrero lagoon once the city no longer needed to keep behind stone.
Marbella extends the same later growth northeast.
Where is El Cabrero?
El Cabrero runs as a narrow strip with the Caribbean Sea on one side and El Cabrero lagoon on the other, from the walled Old City to Marbella.
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More areas in Cartagena
Updated September 2026