Colombia · Distrito Capital de Bogotá · Bogotá
Fontibón, Bogotá — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Fontibón is a western locality of Bogotá, built on the flat savanna plain around the Cathedral of St. James Apostle.
About Fontibón
Where to stay in Fontibón
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Fontibón keeps few hotel beds of its own. As a working western locality of Bogotá, it points most visitors back toward the central districts where the rooms cluster, and the neighbourhood itself runs on the everyday traffic that crosses it between Engativá and Kennedy rather than on lodging. Book a room in central Bogotá instead.
The plain here is built for living and moving, not for spending the night around the Cathedral of St. James Apostle.
About Fontibón
What are the main landmarks in Fontibón?
The cathedral church of St. James Apostle anchors Fontibón. Its parish square marks the old colonial core of the locality, a churchyard that predates the grid streets and warehouses now spreading across the surrounding savanna toward Engativá and Kennedy. The church came first.
Everything on this western plain of Bogotá still reads from that one square outward, and the streets around it carry the daily life of the neighbourhood past its doors.
What is the history of Fontibón?
Fontibón began as an indigenous Muisca settlement on the savanna west of the site that became Bogotá. The Spanish reorganised it into a colonial parish gathered around the Cathedral of St. James Apostle, and for centuries it stayed a distinct town on the savanna plain before the growing capital of Colombia absorbed it as a western locality between Engativá and Kennedy. The town was old already.
Bogotá simply reached out and closed the gap of open savanna that once separated them.
Where is Fontibón?
Fontibón spreads across the flat western savanna of Bogotá, a locality of roughly 33 square kilometres bounded by Engativá to the north and Kennedy to the south.
More areas in Bogotá
Updated July 2026