Usme, Bogotá — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Usme?

Two landmarks anchor Usme. The old church of San Pedro de Usme presides over Usme Pueblo, the colonial town centre laid out in 1650 and still the historic heart of the locality's southern reach. Further out at Hacienda El Carmen lies the archaeological find that reset Usme's story, where excavation exposed a Muisca burial ground of more than 2,000 tombs beneath ground once slated for houses.

Around both spreads Parque Entrenubes, the ecological park in the Eastern Hills that guards the upper Río Tunjuelo and its native woodland. History and hillside meet here.

What is the history of Usme?

Usme began as San Pedro de Usme, a parish founded in 1650 on the southern haciendas above Bogotá. Farming shaped it for centuries. The upper Río Tunjuelo watered fields and estates while the small colonial town at Usme Pueblo served the surrounding veredas, and rural life held long after the city below had spread north across the plain.

Then the ground gave up its past. Excavation at Hacienda El Carmen in the 2000s uncovered a Muisca burial ground of thousands of tombs, proof that communities had worked the upper basin long before the parish, and it reframed Usme from a farming fringe into a place of deep pre-Hispanic memory.

Where is Usme?

Usme spreads across the mountainous southern edge of Bogotá, its tropical highland terrain rising from the upper Río Tunjuelo into farmland and páramo toward Sumapaz, San Cristóbal, and Ciudad Bolívar.