Origins
Castilla was not always the succession of residential blocks, workshops and warehouses that today welcomes the traveler who gets off the metro at the station that bears its name. For much of the 20th century, this sector of northern Medellín was synonymous with smokestack, shift and overalls. The city grew northward pushed by industry, and Castilla was caught in that push: first as a factory expansion zone, later as a working-class neighborhood where several generations of Antioquian families learned that the factory whistle marked the rhythm of the day.
Medellín's industrial memory is usually told from El Poblado, Guayabal or the large textile mills of the south. But the north has its own history, less glamorous and more down-to-earth: food plants, processing facilities, grain warehouses and a transportation network that moved raw materials toward the valley. Castilla was one of those nodes. And within that landscape of brick and concrete, a structure emerged that became iconic: the silos.
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Silos, by definition, are functional architecture. They are not built to be pretty, but to store volume. Cylinders of concrete or sheet metal, tall, closed, almost blind, with external stairs and loading mouths at the top. In a neighborhood of low houses and wide streets, a silo can be seen from afar. And that is precisely what happened in Castilla: for decades, those towers were geographic references for the neighbors, long before cell phone maps existed.
Timeline or historical milestones
The years of the food industry in the north
The Federación Nacional de Arroceros, FEDEARROZ, is the most important rice growers' association in Colombia and was founded in 1947. Throughout its history it has brought together rice producers from all over the country, and its presence goes beyond guild offices: it has operated infrastructure for the collection, drying and storage of grain in various regions. In this context, the grain plant was established in Castilla, along the calle 80 corridor, a road that has functioned as a connecting axis between the center and the north, and that for decades was also a freight corridor.
There is no need to exaggerate the story or invent myths. What is verifiable is this: FEDEARROZ has existed since 1947, has a national presence and in Medellín, the Castilla sector housed grain storage infrastructure linked to that agro-industrial operation. The silos that today stand unused along that corridor are the physical trace of that era. They are not archaeological ruins or secret tunnels; they are structures that stopped operating when the city's logistics logic changed.
The turn of the century and the industrial blackout
Between the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, Medellín experienced a profound transformation of its economy. The textile and manufacturing industry lost weight against services, commerce and later technology. The plants that had defined entire neighborhoods began to close, relocate or reduce operations. Castilla was no exception. The grain warehouses, loading yards and processing plants fell silent.
Silos, by their nature, are difficult to repurpose. They do not easily become apartments or offices. They require costly structural intervention, and often the land they sit on is worth more empty than occupied. That explains why in so many cities around the world silos remain as ghosts: nobody demolishes them because it costs money, nobody uses them because they are not good for much, and there they stay, aging in plain sight.
The arrival of the metro and the new centrality
A milestone that transformed the neighborhood's relationship with the city was the arrival of the Metro system. The Castilla station, on line B that connects the center with the north, put the neighborhood on the map of mass transit. From then on, Castilla stopped being just a peripheral working-class neighborhood and also became a transit point for thousands of people who live further north. That changed commerce, land prices and the perception of the sector.
Today, in September 2026, the Castilla station remains one of the gateways to northern Medellín. And the silos are still there, visible from the calle 80 corridor, as a reminder of an era that refuses to disappear.
Key figures or events
FEDEARROZ and the footprint of rice in the city
FEDEARROZ is not a person, it is an institution with a long and documented history. Founded in 1947, it became the guild that articulates the country's rice producers, with technical assistance, research and marketing programs. Its presence in Medellín, through collection and storage infrastructure, is part of that national network that connects the rice-growing countryside with urban consumption centers.
For the visitor who arrives in Castilla looking for the history of the silos, it is vital to understand that those structures are not an architectural whim: they are the visible tip of a productive chain that for decades moved tons of grain from the llanos and other rice-growing regions toward the interior of the country. Medellín, as an industrial and commercial center, was part of that chain.
The neighbors as chroniclers
Here there is no famous figure with a proper name to rescue. The true protagonist is the neighbor of Castilla. The people who grew up seeing the silos from their window, who used the silhouette of the towers to orient themselves when returning at night, who remember the noise of trucks entering and leaving the loading yard. That memory is not in any official archive; it is in the conversations at the corner store, in the meetings of the community action board and in the old photos that some families keep.
If you go to Castilla with respect and curiosity, the most valuable thing you can do is not just photograph the silos: it is to ask. In the stores, bakeries and cafeterias of the sector there are people who have been in the neighborhood for fifty years and who can tell you what the industrial movement was like before everything shut down. That cannot be found on the internet.
The Castilla Partial Plan and the discussion about the future
In recent years, the city has discussed different planning instruments for northern Medellín, and the Castilla sector has been part of those conversations. Partial plans are tools of the POT (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial) that define how a specific area is transformed: what can be built, what must be preserved, how public space is distributed and what land uses are permitted. When a sector enters a partial plan, the land changes in value and expectation.
That puts the silos in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, they are part of the city's industrial heritage: nobody declared them a monument, but they are part of the landscape and of memory. On the other hand, they are obsolete structures on land that the city wants to densify and renew. The tension between preserving and demolishing is real, and it is not resolved with hashtags, but with technical and political decisions.
It is important to verify the current status of the partial plans and of any heritage declaration directly with the Alcaldía de Medellín or with the Secretaría de Cultura Ciudadana, because these processes change and an old article can be misleading.
Current state
What remains today of the Castilla silos
What remains is what you see: cylindrical storage structures, unused, along the calle 80 corridor in the Castilla sector. There is no visitor center, no enabled viewpoint, no official guided tour. There are no secret tunnels or underground vaults open to the public. Any story that promises you access to hidden passageways or clandestine rooms inside the silos is false. They are private structures or in the process of legal definition, and access is restricted.
That means that the experience of visiting them is, today, an experience of contemplation from public space. They are seen from the street, from the metro passage, from the sidewalks of the corridor. For an urban photographer, that can be enough: the texture of aged concrete, the rusty external stairs, the monumental scale in front of the neighborhood's low houses. It is industrial photography without production, without ticketing, without a line.
If what you are looking for is to understand the context, the neighborhood itself is the museum. Walk through the surrounding streets, look at the warehouses that still operate, the workshops, the two-story houses with grilles, the food shops. There is the real Castilla, the one that does not appear in the guides.
How to get there and what to expect
The easiest way to get there is by the Metro system. The Castilla station, on line B, leaves you in the heart of the sector. From there, walking toward the calle 80 corridor and its surroundings allows you to locate the structures. It is a normal transit area, with commerce, transportation and neighborhood movement. It is not a marked tourist destination, so go with realistic expectations: there are no explanatory signs or customer service staff.
To eat, the sector has neighborhood food offerings: bakeries, cafeterias, daily lunch spots and fast food. Prices are accessible and tend to be inexpensive, in line with what a lunch costs in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Medellín. If you want something more structured, the center of Medellín is a few metro stations away, where the gastronomic offering expands considerably.
If you are interested in Medellín's industrial photography, it is worth combining this visit with other points in the north and the center. The city has a scattered industrial heritage that is almost never promoted as an attraction: old warehouses, loading yards, reconverted railway stations. Castilla is one piece of that puzzle.
Neighborhood memory: what the silos mean today
For those who grew up in Castilla, the silos are part of the neighborhood's mental landscape. They are not an attraction, they are a reference. Just like the church, the park or the metro station. The difference is that the silos are mute: they have no function, no activity, they generate no employment. They are there as a reminder of what the neighborhood was and what it no longer is.
That ambivalence is interesting. There are neighbors who see them with affection, as a symbol of an era when the neighborhood had factories and work. Others see them as a problem: old structures, potentially unsafe, that occupy land that could be used for something else. Both positions are legitimate, and any serious conversation about the future of the silos should listen to both.
What should not happen is that they disappear without anyone noticing. That is what happens when the stories that surround us are not documented. Castilla's memory, with its silos as witnesses, deserves to be told and preserved.
