Where to stay in Bogotá: the 5 neighborhoods to know in 2026

La Candelaria is the city of 1538, sloping up against the mountain: cobbled streets, low houses with ochre and blue walls, wooden balconies, and a museum every hundred meters. The Plaza de Bolívar is its base, with the cathedral, the Capitol and the presidential palace; two streets higher, the Botero Museum, free, and the Casa de Moneda; on the Carrera Séptima, the Gold Museum and its dark rooms where pre-Columbian pieces float in the light. To the north, the little square of the Chorro de Quevedo, its storytellers and its chicha bars; above it, the Monserrate funicular climbs to 3,150 meters. The downside: the neighborhood empties at night and the sloping streets turn dark; you go home by app taxi after ten in the evening, and one member review recalls what the air of the center costs.

There are too many cars, and aside from a few streets, walking around is not pleasant. And the pollution! By the second day, I had a nosebleed!

Toto

Between Calle 26 and the national park, the city built its modernity: the Torre Colpatria, fifty floors from 1979, the red-brick bullring, the Tequendama hotel of 1953, and the National Museum, housed in the cross-shaped penitentiary of 1874. The Museum of Modern Art and the planetarium close off Independence Park. Behind, against the mountain, La Macarena: stepped streets, brick houses, and the highest density of small restaurants in the city, from bistro to arepa counter. The TransMilenio stops at Museo Nacional, on the Séptima. The downside: Calle 26 is an urban expressway, and the neighborhood is a place you pass through, not one for evenings.

Chapinero is fifty calles long, and each set of ten has its use: around Calle 70, the Zona G, two streets of restaurants in brick houses; around 82, the Zona T, its bars and its terraces laid out in a T; at 93, the Parque de la 93, a square of lawn ringed by cafés, and behind it El Chicó, its villas and its small colonial museum. In between, office towers, shopping malls and the chain hotels. You walk here in the evening, you run here on Sundays on the closed Séptima. The downside: no monuments, and a taxi to reach La Candelaria, forty minutes at rush hour. One member review sums it up.

You can easily party here every weeknight if you want to. The downside is getting around.

V Vaness

Usaquén was a village before it was a neighborhood, and it has kept the square: a white church of 1665, low houses, restaurants in the patios and, on Sundays, the flea market that spills into every street around. Next door, the Hacienda Santa Bárbara, a colonial farm turned shopping mall, and Unicentro, the oldest in the city. This is the north of Bogotá families, with wide pavements, parks and recent chain hotels. The downside: an hour's drive to La Candelaria, and an evening life that ends with dinner.

Teusaquillo is the neighborhood of 1930s English-style houses, brick and little gardens, around the Parkway, a planted avenue where people walk their dogs. To the west begins the Salitre: the Corferias exhibition center, El Campín stadium and its football Sundays, then the botanical garden, the Salitre Mágico amusement park and the Maloka science museum. El Dorado airport is a quarter of an hour away by Calle 26. The hotels here are new, chain-run, and full of conferences on weekdays. The downside: nothing old, and half an hour of TransMilenio to reach La Candelaria or Chapinero.