Why Did Café del Mar in Cartagena Close and What Replaced It?

If you take a look around at tips on things to do in Cartagena, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Café del Mar. This bar and restaurant, atop the colonial walls of Cartagena has long been a favorite of tourists and is arguably one of the city’s longest running and most iconic places.

However, on September 2, 2024, Café del Mar was been shut down by Cartagena’s authorities, after a multiyear saga of legal disputes.

The closure of Café del Mar was the result of an over 10 year court case that seems to have begun as dispute between neighbors but grew into a controversy and debate over the intersection between tourism, public space, and access to historic sites.

It all culminated in the permanent closure of Café del Mar and its replacement with a business run by the city, supposedly more for the public good.

If you’d like to learn more about why Cartagena’s Café del Mar was shut down, I’ll go over some details of the case, and share my opinion on its closing in this post.

A Short History of Cartagena’s Café del Mar

Café del Mar opened in 2002, owned by a German named Peter Kreill and a Colombian named Carlos Sánchez García.

It sat atop the Baluarte (or Bastion) de Santo Domingo, which was actually the first section of Cartagena’s wall to be built, with construction beginning in 1602. You can learn more interesting facts about Cartagena’s walls here.

When it opened, Café del Mar arranged a contract with the entity that is responsible for maintaining Cartagena’s walls and fortress, the Escuela Taller Cartagena de Indias (ETCAR).

Essentially, they paid a monthly rent and were responsible for cleaning and maintaining the area in exchange for being able to run their business there.

And, a successful business it certainly seemed to be.

It’s a privileged location, not just because it was on the wall, but because it was on the part of the wall that juts the farthest out, with a nearly direct and unobstructed view out to where the sun sets over the Caribbean.

That made it a famous landmark and an iconic place to have a drink with the sunset in Cartagena. See the best places to have sunset drinks in Cartagena here.

Why Café del Mar Was Forced to Close

Café del Mar was forced to close due to the final result of a lawsuit filed all the way back in 2014 that alleged the bar and restaurant disobeyed the terms of the original contract and, in effect, violated Colombian citizens’ rights of access to their national heritage.

The main complaint seems to be that by roping off the area where their tables were located Café del Mar prevented free access to an area that should be open to all Colombians.

However, the suit also noted that they violated the terms of the contract by hanging banners, using the guard post for business purposes, and altering part of the structure.

It also alleged that there was not an open bidding process for the contract and the rental price was lower than a reasonable market rate would suggest.

The lawsuit was filed by David García Gómez, who I can’t find much public information on beyond his name in news articles on the closure.

However, digging through the actual final court order to close Café del Mar, I found a pretty juicy nugget buried in the section that covers the history of the case.

Apparently, in earlier proceedings Café del Mar’s lawyers alleged the suit was filed as a result of a personal grievance between García and Kreill.

Café del Mar’s lawyers alleged that García didn’t care about the supposed violations of the contract or public access to the space at all, but that this was simply a personal vendetta to get the business shuttered or taken away from Kreill.

This grievance arose from a dispute over a terrace in a building they both lived in.

Yes, I promise I’m being serious!

You can consult point 10.1 on page 6 of the order here to read this allegation.

This dissenting opinion from one of the members of the Consejo del Estado also basically argues against the opinion due to the argument that the origin of the suit was simply to find an excuse to negatively affect Kreill, not an authentic complaint about the use of public space by Café del Mar.

In fact, García actually withdrew his complaint in 2016.

However, because he filed it under a mechanism that allows for individuals to sue in the public interest (García as plaintiff was designated an “actor popular”), the case continued.

Anyways, although the suit was filed in 2014, it took until 2019 for the Tribunal Administrivo del Bolívar, sort of like the district court of Bolívar, the department, or state, that Cartagena is part of, to make a decision.

On August 13, 2019, it agreed in part with García’s original complaint and ruled that Café del Mar did violate the contract and the public right to access the historic site. They also ruled that the area was rented at a below market rate, although it did find that they had not damage the site.

Café del Mar and the Cartagena municipal government appealed this decision.

On November 21, 2022, the Consejo de Estado ruled against them, agreeing with the earlier decision and ordering the Escuela Taller to end the contract with Café del Mar and come up with another way to administer the site that didn’t impede public access.

If you delve into the order linked above, you can find a long, convoluted legal discussion in Spanish that in essence says a public site like the wall can’t be part of a rental contract. It argues businesses can use those types of spaces but through arrangements that, in their language, imply “compatible”, not “exclusive” use.

Doing my best to cut through the legalese in a second language, I guess that means something along the lines of you can pay for a license to set up your hot dog stand in the park, but you can’t rent a space in the park to use for your hot dog stand.

Yeah, this is just semantics, but I guess that’s the law for you.

It’s worth noting that this decision didn’t necessarily rule out leaving a business on the site or even that Café del Mar could continue opearting on the site, only that they couldn’t have rental contract for the space.

However, it seems no other legally viable arrangement was ever reached.

On January 25, 2023, Café del Mar and ETCAR were ordered by the Consejo de Estado to terminate their contract. At that time the Baluarte de Santo Domingo would be returned to ETCAR’s sole administration within 6 months and any future arrangement would have to walk the line between compatible and exclusive.

It seems that order was finally carried out nearly 18 months later with the formal forced closure of Café del Mar by Cartagena’s authorities on September 2, 2024.

What’s Going to Take Café del Mar’s Place?

It’s still a little unclear.

In the immediate aftermath of Café del Mar’s closure, the Instituto de Patrimonio Cultural (IPCC) announced in this Instagram post that they would be organizing cultural and artistic presentations Thursday-Sunday evenings starting at 5 pm atop the Baluarte de Santo Domingo, which they began calling the “Baluarte de la gente,” or the “people’s bastion.”

Also, even as the mayor also has taken to calling this the “people’s bastion,” his tweet here about the closure suggests they plan to rent the space again at a higher price with the condition that the area not be cordoned off.

This led me to believe the most likely long term outcome was a new business opening here.

As of the last update to this article on May 27, 2025, it looks like that premonition was right. The El Baluarte Santo Domingo – Escuela Taller officially opened on Saturday May 24, 2025.

El Baluarte Santo Domingo – Escuela Taller / “Baluarte de la Gente”

It appears El Baluarte Santo Domingo – Escuela Taller is the official name of the new restaurant, although I’ve also seen it called “El Baluarte de la Gente” in some publications.

According to this press release from the mayor’s office, the new restaurants will be run by ETCAR, employ young Cartageneros completing ETCAR apprenticeships, and all the profits will be reinvested in “training of young people, maintenance, conservation, and improvements of the cultural assets managed by the district.”

It also says the restaurant will have a menu featuring creative takes on traditional dishes and will be open from 4 pm to 11 pm seven days a week.

It also says the space will be completely open to the public and conduct regular free cultural presentations and activities.

My Takes

I originally wrote this bit just after the announcement of the closure of Café del Mar, and this is mostly focused on my reaction to it. However, I’ve added some thoughts at the end on the new place that recently opened up in its place.

My Thoughts on Café del Mar’s Closure

I have mixed feelings Cartagena’s Café del Mar being forced to close.

On one hand, the history major in me feels like this is a historic site and should be treated as such, open to the public for anyone to enjoy, and preferably with some form of recognition of the site’s historical significance.

Honestly, what percentage of the tourists that visited Café del Mar know that this was the first part of the walls constructed?

How many of them know it was constructed to defend the place where the British, during Francis Drake’s attack on Cartagena, crossed a narrow narrow sandbar from Bocagrande to attack the city?

How many of them know that the bathrooms are built inside what were once ramps up to cannon emplacements embedded in the walls halfway up in a fairly historically unique design?

And I’d dare to ask how many average Cartageneros know those things?

There ought to be historic signs, markers, and maps explaining this history.

Speaking of the average Cartagenero, I also think it was somewhat problematic that most of them probably felt like Café del Mar was all but inaccessible to them, an issue I hear more about as tourism grows and more and more smaller, cheaper establishments in Centro and Getsemaní are replaced with business catering primarily to tourists and with prices that are out of reach for most locals.

Comments on social media and news stories about Café del Mar’s closure seem to largely reflect this sentiment.

I also watched during my decade living in Cartagena as Café del Mar gradually expanded to include nearly the entirety of the part of the wall facing the sea, blocking the “Café del Lado” area open to the public and giving the argument that they prevented free access to this site a lot of weight.

All that being said, while I always found Café del Mar to be overpriced and wasn’t a fan of their music that, in my opinion, didn’t fit the location, I definitely enjoyed a drink with the view here many times. Susana and I used to enjoy the food, but it had declined quite a bit in quality in more recent years as did the overall service.

Or maybe it didn’t and it just felt that way as more neat places with creative cocktails opened up over time and it felt more and more like a tourist trap rather than one of the fancier places around.

I would still take with friends and family visiting to Café del Mar and felt it was worth the premium price for the view and unique location atop the wall.

As representatives of Café del Mar point out in this article arguing against the closure, I also do sincerely think they were pretty decent stewards of the site. It was kept clean, and the images of the Cartagena and Colombian flags atop the walls were truly iconic images of Cartagena, DJs and bright lights set up in the guardhouse notwithstanding.

They also did employ a lot of people, people who will now be without a job. Susana worked at Café del Mar while she put herself through college and has mostly good things to say about how she was treated as an employee.

Still, my BS radar goes up pretty quick when I hear business owners talk about how great they are for employing people and roll their employees out to protest with social media posts while the owner has said nothing publicly that I can find. That article linked also goes out of its way to mention how they employ single mothers, which feels a little virtue signally to me.

While they aren’t wrong, they knew the closure was likely to come for over 2 years. If they’re so high and mighty and care so much about their workers, why didn’t they come up with some plan to support their transition to other jobs or plan to reopen elsewhere in that time?

Although then again, this whole issue supposedly began because two presumingly wealthy individuals had a personal spat.

While I don’t disagree with the notion they were paying less than what the site was worth, there’s something inherently hypocritical about patting yourself on the back for reopening the space to the general public while also saying the private business that was there didn’t pay enough rent and they plan to get its true worth from someone else.

That’s even more the case if you consider, as this article points out, that other businesses on the walls and fortifications of Cartagena pay even less than what Café del Mar was paying.

I suspect that what really happened here after such a long delay from the initial ruling and the fact that this seemed to come as some sort of surprise to the management and workers of Café del Mar despite that long delay is that they couldn’t agree to a price and/or there’s backroom politics at play, and that the city will attempt to re “rent” the area at a higher price with some clever semantics in whatever arrangement they reach.

I guess in a perfect world, Café del Mar would have never been opened here.

In the non perfect world we are living in, I would have been perfectly fine with it staying, perhaps with a more limited use of the space, some historical markers, and maybe a change to the music.

In that imaginary perfect world, a really cool cultural space with historic markers, perhaps where you could still enjoy a much more reasonably priced drink, tinto, ice cream, or raspao might take its place.

My Take on the Baluarte Santo Domingo – Escuela Taller

I should preface this by saying I have not been here yet, and since we are no longer living permanently in Cartagena may not be able to visit for a while. I will try to keep an eye out on reports of what it’s like, but this is just based on my initial reaction to hearing something would open here.

This new Baluarte Santo Domingo – Escuela Taller could maybe offer that perfect middle ground I imagined above. Although it sounds more like restaurant than stands with some simple and cheap foods.

It sounds like a good idea, and one that in theory can make this an enjoyable space for tourists to come, spend some money, and then use that money for the public good of maintaining the walls and investing in job training, while also keeping the space open to the public.

In the very much not perfect real world we are living in, I remain a little bit skeptical.

I could see it becoming a nice place, even better than Café del Mar, but with prices that make it not so accessible to the average Cartagenero. Of course, if it goes this route, this whole fiasco may have always just been a way to line some bureaucrats’ or cronies’ pockets.

I could also see it remaining accessible but not being very impressive, or even worse eventually falling into disrepair.

I saw a number of well intentioned investments in things like parks during my years living in Cartagena like the area around Mall Plaza or the park over the tunnel in Crespo that fell into disrepair after a few years when the new mayor didn’t care about the last mayor’s work and moved on to whatever their signature thing is.

I’ll give the current mayor credit that he’s made efforts to revitalize some of those spaces, including the park in Crespo. I’ll caveat that by saying, he loves making sure everyone knows about it on Instagram. So, now we’re back to square one questioning if the current mayor will neglect this one’s pet projects.

I will say that most of the walls and the Castillo San Felipe are in much better shape than I remember when I arrived in Cartagena, so maybe ETCAR can succeed in maintaining the space themselves.

Perhaps a happy medium and the best outcome here is a somewhat overpriced and somewhat mediocre spot that has a good sunset view.

Or if this effort fails, maybe the area can become something akin to what the Plaza de la Trinidad in Getsemaní has become.

Regardless of what ultimately happens over the coming months and years, I expect everyone to give themselves a cynical pat on the back about preserving the site, “saving” the Baluarte de Santo Domingo, and maybe even throwing in a bit about doing something nice for single mothers too.

I guess if it includes some historical markers, I’ll live with that and hopefully even get to enjoy a decently priced drink with some decently tasteful music.

What do you think about Café del Mar’s closure? Have you visited the new Baluarte Santo Doming – ETCAR aka “People’s Baluarte?”

Let me know in the comments.