The Cali Not on Maps: Secrets of the Hidden Cali Beneath the Asphalt

The myth of the city without a deep past

When you walk through downtown Cali, amid the bustle of Carrera 7 and Calle 12, it's easy to think this is a city without layers, without basements, without buried memory. Tour guides talk about salsa, the Feria, sugarcane. But few know that beneath the paving stones of the historic center, beneath the colonial churches and Republican mansions, there is a network of tunnels, foundations, and remains that tells another story: that of a city rebuilt upon itself time and again.

Cali is not Bogotá with its hills, nor Medellín with its radical transformation. It is a city that has grown horizontally, swallowing its own vestiges. The earthquakes of 1766 and 1922, the floods of the Cali River, the modernization of the 50s and 60s: all of that was sealed beneath the asphalt. This article is for the traveler who wants to see the city with different eyes, for the local who has never looked down.

Origins

To understand the hidden Cali, you have to go back to its foundation. Santiago de Cali was founded on July 25, 1536, by Sebastián de Belalcázar, but not where downtown is today. The first foundation was on the right bank of the Cali River, near what is now the La Campiña neighborhood. Attacks by the Jamundí indigenous people and other tribes of the region forced the Spanish to relocate the city in 1537 to its current site, between the Cali River and the Cauca River.

That change of location was the first act of a city constantly remaking itself. But what few tell is that the Spanish did not arrive at an empty land. The area was already inhabited by pre-Hispanic communities that left mounds, paths, and burials. When the Banco de la República building was constructed in the heart of downtown in the 80s, archaeologists found remains of pottery and indigenous tombs beneath the foundations. The city did not begin with the Spanish: it began much earlier, and that was buried beneath the bank vaults.

Colonial Cali was a small city, just a few blocks around Plaza de Caicedo. The houses were made of bahareque and clay tiles, with inner courtyards and vegetable gardens. The earthquakes, especially the one in 1766, destroyed much of that first layout. Instead of demolishing and rebuilding from scratch, the inhabitants simply filled in the rubble and built on top. Thus were born the city's first natural basements: layers of debris, animal bones, broken ceramics, and old foundations that today support modern buildings.

Timeline or historical milestones

1536-1537: Foundation and relocation

The first Cali was founded near the river but moved to its current site after indigenous attacks. The original layout is lost, but some local historians maintain that the foundations of that first city still lie beneath the pastures of La Campiña and the northern housing developments.

1766: The earthquake that changed everything

On February 9, 1766, a devastating earthquake destroyed most of the colonial buildings in Cali. The reconstruction was not planned: people filled the gaps with rubble and raised new houses over the ruins. This is the origin of many of the "holes" and basements found today in the center.

1870-1920: The Republican era and the galleries

With the arrival of the railroad and the prosperity of the coffee trade, Cali expanded southward and westward. Republican mansions were built with basements and tunnels connecting warehouses to the main houses. Many of these underground connections still exist, although they are sealed.

1922: The earthquake that modernized the city

Another earthquake in 1922 destroyed much of the center. The city took the opportunity to modernize its streets, widen them, and build taller buildings. The rubble of the colonial houses was used as fill to level terrain and create new roads. Colonial Cali was definitively buried.

1950-1970: The urban explosion

Industrialization attracted thousands of migrants. Wetlands were filled, streams were diverted, and avenues like Quinta and Sexta were built over old watercourses. The center densified, and colonial courtyards became parking lots and warehouses. The underground city expanded with sewers, ducts, and concrete basements.

1990-2020: The rediscovery

Archaeologists and urban planners began documenting the hidden remains. Tunnels were found beneath the Cathedral of San Pedro, remains of the wall of the San Francisco convent, and foundations of the old La Merced church. Interest in underground Cali grew, but most of these sites remain closed to the public.

Key figures or events

Sebastián de Belalcázar and the first foundation

The Spanish conquistador is known to all, but few know that his first Cali is literally buried. Colonial maps indicate that the first church, a straw chapel, was abandoned and its remains were never excavated. Today, the lands of La Campiña could hold the foundations of that chapel, but no systematic excavations have been carried out.

Father José María Fernández

This 19th-century priest was one of the first to document the tunnels of the center. In his chronicles, he describes passageways connecting the San Francisco church with the Santo Domingo convent, used by the religious to move without going out into the street. Some historians believe those tunnels were part of a larger system that reached the Cali River, used to escape in case of attacks or floods.

Ricardo Borrero Álvarez, the chronicler of the lost

This historian from Cali, active in the 60s and 70s, dedicated his life to collecting testimonies from elderly people who remembered pre-modernization Cali. His archives, now in the Biblioteca Departamental, include tunnel plans, photographs of demolished mansions, and maps of streams that no longer exist. Thanks to his work, we know that Calle 5, between Carrera 4 and 5, was originally a stream that was channeled and turned into a street.

The 1926 flood

The Cali River, which today seems like a trickle of water, used to be a dangerous torrent. In 1926, a sudden flood destroyed the La Ermita neighborhood, which was on the left bank of the river. The houses were swept away, and the city decided to build a retaining wall. The remains of that vanished neighborhood are beneath the current Parque de los Gatos and Avenida Colombia. The foundations of the houses, the water wells, and even the stone staircases are still there, sealed under the concrete.

The tunnels of old Cali: passageways beneath churches and mansions

The most persistent urban myth in Cali is that of the tunnels connecting the downtown churches. It is not pure legend: there is documentary and architectural evidence that several religious buildings were connected by underground passageways. The most documented is the one that went from the Cathedral of San Pedro to the La Merced church, passing beneath Plaza de Caicedo.

These tunnels were not for escaping invasions or for secret rituals, as legends say. They were functional passageways that allowed priests and nuns to move between buildings without having to cross paths with the common folk. They also served to transport food and goods from the warehouses near the river to the convents, avoiding taxes in the public squares.

In the 1980s, when the Centro Administrativo Municipal (CAM) was built, workers found a brick tunnel running parallel to Calle 11. Its existence was documented, but it was sealed to avoid delaying the project. Some CAM employees still tell stories of hearing knocks and inexplicable drafts of air in the building's basements.

Another key point is the San Francisco church, at Carrera 4 with Calle 9. Beneath its cloisters, now converted into a museum of religious art, there are crypts and corridors that connected with the old Santo Domingo convent. These corridors were used during the Thousand Days' War (1899-1902) to hide weapons and shelter the wounded. Today they are sealed, but museum staff confirm they exist and that some sections are still accessible.

If you want to see a visible example of this underground architecture without needing special permits, walk along Carrera 5 between Calles 10 and 11. There, on the western sidewalk, there are ventilation grates that reveal brick vaults about two meters deep. They are the remains of the warehouses of the old Caicedo house, one of the most powerful families of the colonial era.

The Cali River: a historical actor beneath the asphalt

The Cali River is not just a geographical feature: it is the origin of the city and, also, one of its greatest historical threats. Before the construction of the levees and retaining walls in the 30s and 40s, the river frequently overflowed and changed course. Those floods shaped the urban layout in a way that is hard to imagine today.

One of the neighborhoods that completely disappeared was the so-called "old Cali," a settlement of fishermen and washerwomen that was located exactly where the Plazoleta de San Francisco is today. In 1926, a flood swept away the bahareque houses and killed dozens of people. The city decided not to rebuild the neighborhood and instead created a park. The rubble from those houses was used to fill the land and raise the street level. Today, the foundations of old Cali are about three meters below the level of Calle 9.

The river also left its mark on place names. Calle Quinta, one of the most important in Cali, was originally a bridle path that followed the course of a stream, the La Chanca stream. That stream was channeled in the 50s and today runs beneath the asphalt of Quinta, emptying into the Cali River at Puente Ortiz. Engineers who have worked on road repairs confirm that in some sections the sewer pipe is actually the old natural course, with the river stones still visible.

Another curious fact: the current Boulevard del Río, that pedestrian path running from Puente Ortiz to Calle 5, was built over an old arm of the river that dried up in the 60s. Cali's grandparents remember that there was a sandy area where children played and women washed clothes. Today, that sandy area is a linear park with trees and benches, but beneath the ground are still the sands of the old riverbed.

Remains of colonial Cali surviving in backyards and modernized facades

Colonial Cali is not completely destroyed. You just have to know how to look. Many modern facades in the center hide, in their inner courtyards, remains of the original architecture. A good