CARTAGENA EVOLUTION.

Cartagena was once the jewel of the Spanish Main, the great galleon port from which the wealth of the Indies was taken to Europe. Miraculously, it was preserved in the nineteenth century and much of its character remains today, so much so that it has become a UNESCO World Heritage site. But it faces threats from ill-considered modern development. Jim Antoniou, who wrote the article and drew the illustrations, argues that the city should be saved, but alive and with the cooperation of local communities, not just as a picturesque tourist attraction.

IF YOU PLACE your palms side by side like an open book, you have a plan of Cartagena de Indias on Colombia's Caribbean Coast, one of the most impressive survivors of the Spanish-colonial period. Your left palm corresponds to the island of Gatsemani, while your right is Calamari, the walled town laced with castellated bastions. In this compact area (about the size of London's Regent's Park), some 10 000 people reside, compared to Cartagena's one million inhabitants.

The narrow triangular area between your palms is La Matuna (or 'the fish pond'), now filled in and spiked with tall office buildings that tower above the historic city. A modern island surrounded by historic buildings, La Matuna is the sore thumb in our analogy, although it helps to relieve commercial pressure within the historic districts on either side. Along the tips of your fingers is the Bocagrande peninsula, where hotels line up on the dramatic skyline, imitating Miami in miniature.

Today, Cartagena is a living museum of 400 years of architecture. Its symbolic significance is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and a treasure of mansions built around courtyards, punctuated with majestic churches in intimate squares, all of which have survived for more than 300 years. Walking around the streets, the city's undeniable appeal is its fertile life style. The narrow, irregular paths provide shelter from the tropical sun, while overhanging balconies almost touch across busy streets, inviting breeze inside splendid houses. On the city walls, the bastions have become the popular rendezvous for lovers and local people refer to them as 'stone beds'. The massive San Filipe fort still stands, strategically over San Lazaro Hill.

CARTAGENA HAS A UNIQUE ARCHITECTURAL IDENTITY and contains many charming buildings of significance. A walk through the historic core can be the same exhilarating experience it must have been centuries ago. Crucial to the city is the need to protect not just individual buildings of significance, but the entire urban context and distinctive sense of place of the historic area. This can ensure that the whole city can be kept alive, with its economic base rejuvenated and its links to the surrounding modern city reinforced.

Another important consideration is the development of vacant land around the periphery of the historic core. The blending of the old, with its patina of age and modern new developments conceived on a large and alien scale (eg La Matuna commercial area) is a major challenge to be faced in Cartagena. Careful planning and design are needed along the Bay of Cartagena and the new development of Chambacu, which has just started.

As early as 1502, Rodrigo de Bastidas discovered Colombia's Atlantic coast, sighting a closed bay, similar to the one at Cartagena in Spain. In Latin America, Cartagena's historic development can be traced to 1533, when the city was founded on the shore of the open sea by Don Pedro de Heredia from Madrid, taking advantage of its natural port and strategic location. The small Yurbaco Indian population that lived on the island of Calamari quickly fled when the conquistadores arrived. The Spanish prepared a plan for a settlement based on a simple outline of streets and a plaza. At first, primitive cottages of timber and straw with palm roofs were built on assigned plots, vulnerable to tropical rains from the heavy north winds, as well as frequent fires.

However, it was quickly realized that this strategic location could play a crucial role as a commercial centre and as a port of immense wealth, for loading treasures from other parts of Latin America for the Spanish crown. No other city in Hispanic America kept such close ties with Spain, particularly Seville. Cartagena became the most important port in the New World. Galleons from Spain called at Cartagena on their way to Portohelo on the Isthmus of Panama to sell their goods, picking up riches from Peru before returning to Spain. The galleons would remain in Cartagena at least six months and sometimes a whole year. Local shipyards undertook repairs and merchants provided supplies, making Cartagena a warehouse for Spanish trade. The city also had the dubious distinction of being granted a royal monopoly, becoming Latin America's first port for African slaves.

After Francis Drake (still considered here as a braggart and a pirate) practically destroyed the town over a period of two months in 1586, Philip II sent military engineers, a massive import of slaves from Africa and a great deal of money to prepare plans to practically rebuild the city and protect the port. During the first hundred years, the city's development pattern was established, with religious and civic buildings, houses and convents inside the walls.

This was at a time when Spanish settlers entered the Caribbean Islands, Mexico and central and South America in increasing numbers. The selection of sites for settlements became a major task of exploration. Phillip II in 1573 enacted the 'Laws of the Indies', which established uniform standards and procedures for planning towns and their surroundings. The anonymous author of these regulations detailed the selection of a suitable site, the location of important buildings and spaces and the distribution of living areas. The Laws were certainly among the most important documents in the history of urban development and influenced the layout of many cities in the Americas.

INITIALLY, THE SETTLEMENT IN CARTAGENA developed following a pattern of paths, leading to wells and collection areas for drinking water. This established the irregular street network and varied plot subdivisions, while adapting the regulations provided in the Laws of the Indies. The city prospered and developed. Many houses, often with small frontages and deep plots, were provided. Churches were also sited and by 1690, convents became prominent landmarks. The Spanish avoided the harsh climatic conditions by providing buildings which looked inwards to landscaped courtyards. The focus of the town was the port market, from which narrow streets with overhanging balconies radiated to Plaza Mayor, adjacent to the cathedral.

Even so, Cartagena was repeatedly attacked and battered, first by Baron Pointis of France in 1697, who left the city in a state of ruin. Some 40 years later, Britain decided to strike at the very heart of the Spanish Empire and Edward Vernon arrived with 180 British ships and more than 23 000 men and virtually destroyed the city.

During the late eighteenth century, Charles II ordered a new plan from Spain, using the protection offered by water. Cartagena's hostile environment was used for experiments in defence works, leading to the spectacular fortifications which still stand, by renowned Spanish military engineer Antonio de Arevalo y Pores. Massive forts and batteries were strategically placed around port and city. Ironically, these impregnable bastions were later used by patriots to fight for independence from Spain.

In 1815, Spain recaptured Cartagena, after a long siege. By 1821, Cartagena was the first Colombian city to declare its independence from Spain and later, Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Colombia called the city 'La Heroica', commemorating its struggle. In the process, it lost its commercial importance and depression set in. At the beginning of this century, Cartagena had a population of some 9000 with the buildings inside the walls largely abandoned or destroyed.

A hundred years ago, many well-to-do families decided to leave the walled city and look for a healthier environment. They went to Manga island, south-east of Calamari and built fashionable Neo-Classical and even Oriental houses laid out with tropical gardens along wide streets. Some of these houses still stand today, although gradually they are disappearing to make way for dense new developments. Meanwhile, many of the residences in Calamari, abandoned by their original owners were taken over by poor families and turned into inquilinatos: houses divided into dwellings for many families, creating communities with their own vitality. Parts of the fortifications were demolished for new development in the 1920s and controversy followed until 1959 when the city was declared a national monument. Cartagena continued to develop towards the south and northwest of the historic city.

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE is an integral part of Cartagena's character. In the centre of the city and near the port were the casas altos, the most prosperous houses, with two or three floors. The rest of the walled city is made up of lesser casas bajas, mostly on one floor. House facades have elaborate portals, extended balconies and windows decorated in an amazing variety of timber balustraded grills, influenced by Spain. Corner houses have special treatment and stand out as decorated elements along the street facade. Houses are planned around a courtyard where families conduct their daily lives. Many houses were originally designed with commercial ground floors.

Entrance to the house is through a space called zaguan leading into a vestibulo, a circulation area giving access to the various rooms (either as a corridor or as a continuous interior balcony). In these grand houses, the staircase (escalera), leading to the first floor became a monumental affair. Walls were of coral stone with lime mortars. Stone was in plentiful supply around Cartagena and was used not only for the robust fortifications, but also house walls, and was often carved into intricate facades, as shown in the Palace of the Inquisition. It was also made into quicklime in giant kilns. As stone became expensive, brick walls became popular, with lime plasters and fine washed sand mixed with banana oil. Facades and interiors were painted boldly in a variety of colours, including ochre, light blue, pink, and burnt red. Roofs were timber hipped, like inverted galleons, in the Andalusian tradition.

The historic buildings in Cartagena are finite and irreplaceable. Successful restoration in Cartagena is the means of increasing the viability of resources, establishing confidence in further conservation work and hence, the flow of financial aid. Interest in restoration has progressed steadily since 1918, when the importance of the city walls and fortifications was established. Attention was also given to conserving facades, although many modifications were made. By 1940, the historic district was declared a national monument. But without a buffer zone to protect the historic centre, the commercial area of La Matuna was developed adjacently on a new intrusively large scale. Now, some houses have been restored by prosperous absent landlords (albeit in a gentrified manner, rather than as a socially dynamic solution) and are used as homes for a few months of the year. Yet each has a unique role to play in the development of Cartagena.

ADAPTIVE RE-USE OF OLD BUILDINGS (not just their physical restoration) is needed to enable Cartagena to provide livelihoods for current and future generations. Similarly, the Santa Clara Convent and the Santa Teresa Convent, which for years served as the police headquarters have now been restored and turned into luxury hotels. The appearance of the historic area has been much strengthened over the last 20 years.

The concentration of commercial activities inside the core of Cartagena has kept it lively and dynamic (although the commercia area is now expanding into surrounding residential areas). So, the very qualities which make the historic core of particular interest also help to encourage pressure for development which, unless adequately controlled, can destroy the very characteristics which make these areas so attractive. To counterbalance these pressures for redevelopment, physical enhancement measures should involve major investment. Efforts are being made by the municipality to control and guide development in the historic centre and to preserve the cultural values of the city.

The heritage of Cartagena derives from the pattern of streets and alleyways and the general historic topography, which together make up the grain of the city. The same applies to the architectural styles of the many historic buildings, the shop frontages and the street furniture which provide Cartagena's distinctive development pattern. So conscious efforts must continue to be made within the core of the city to improve the appearance, attraction-and use of the many historic buildings, streets and squares, with preference given to people rather than vehicles.

The challenge for the municipality is to define what gives lasting identity to Cartagena and to assess the extent to which the new can be absorbed sympathetically among the old. The significance of Cartagena is that it has been built by a succession of architects and has managed to retain the inherited qualities of the past that have survived to the end of the twentieth century. Conservation has not only to do with the city's major monuments, but also with the range of buildings that give identity to many styles. The groupings of buildings (whose significance is as much due to social history as to architectural quality) give character to the area, rather than individual structures.

One of the critical issues in respecting the context of Cartagena is the visual consequence of introducing new buildings into the traditional setting. A delicate balance must be reached between variety, which creates a lively, visually exciting contrast and that which has chaotic consequences. Invention, variety and change are possible within consistent visual tradition in Cartagena.

ANOTHER CRITICAL ISSUE is large developments, such as Chambacu (an area of 96 500 sqm, located north-east of the historic core and north of the Castello de San Felipe). To prevent conflict, the aim must be to establish relations between Chambacu and the historic areas and work out their mutual influences.

A careful balance is needed between the traditional emphasis on dense and diverse development (as is the historic core) and new large-scale uses demanding space and accessibility at an accelerated pace of development. The manner in which the new development in Chambacu is made to blend with the adjacent historic areas is a fundamental urban design issue which has to be faced.

Jim Antoniou first had an opportunity to examine the city of Cartagena when in 1996, as senior consultant to Banco de Columbia and Fidecolumbia SA, he provided advice on a feasibility study for an appropriate development for the extensive area of Chambacu on land adjacent to the historic core. The architects for the project were 3D International of Houston, Texas. Since that time, local consultants have adapted these proposals and the project is under construction in phases. Recently, Jim Antoniou returned to Cartagena and wrote and illustrated this article.

Last, but not least, Cartagena cannot be enhanced in isolation from the people who live and work there. Experience shows in other conservation projects that where little community participation has taken place, many problems have arisen, such as indifference and neglect by local people, misuse of historic buildings, inappropriate designs for new additions. A great deal can be achieved through working with the communities and there are clear signs in Cartagena that this is already in progress. The people of Cartagena have knowledge about how their historic city works, much of it unavailable to outside professionals. It is all important to ensure that conservation schemes become part of the process of sustainable development.