Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia

Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia

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The coffee tradition is a symbol of national culture for which Colombia has gained worldwide recognition. The Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia is a continuing productive landscape consisting of six farming landscapes, which integrate eighteen urban settlements.

Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia

The Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia is a continuing productive landscape consisting of six farming landscapes, which integrate eighteen urban settlements.

Not to be confused with the Coffee Triangle (or Coffee Axis), this World Heritage property illustrates natural, economic, and cultural features combined in a mountainous area with collaboratively farmed coffee plantations, some of these in clearings of high forest.

Coffee represents a cultural tradition in Colombia. More than 100 years ago, it was introduced to the country, and the crops were adapted to an environment surrounded by three cordilleras of the Andes.

The coffee farms are located on the steep mountain ranges with vertiginous slopes of over 25% (55 degrees), characteristic of the challenging coffee terrain. These unusual geographic features also affect the small orthogonal plot layouts and influence the architectural typology, lifestyle, and land-use techniques of the cafeteros (coffee growers).

The distinctive way of life of the cafeteros is based on legacies passed down from generation to generation and is linked to their traditional landownership and the unique small farm production system.

The equatorial zone's volcanic soils, altitude, and temperature provided an appropriate environment for developing coffee production across its territory. This generated a cultural identity related to its cultivation which was sustained by the hard work of Colombian farmers.

The property encompasses six farming landscapes, including 18 urban centers on the foothills of the western and central ranges of the Andes Mountains in the country's west. It reflects a centennial tradition of coffee growing in small plots in the high forest and how farmers have adapted cultivation to difficult mountain conditions.

The urban areas, mainly situated on the relatively flat tops of hills above sloping coffee fields, are characterized by the architecture of the Antioquian colonization with Spanish influence. Building materials were, and remain in some areas, cob and pleated cane for the walls with clay tiles for the roofs.

The typical architecture in the urban settlements is a fusion between the Spanish cultural patterns and the region's indigenous culture adapted to the coffee growing process through, for example, their sliding roofs.

Houses function as both dwelling units and centers of economic activity, with walls built in the traditional, more flexible and dynamic 'bahareque' constructive system and covered by a layer of bamboo well known for its resistance and malleability. Over fifty percent of the walls are still built using this traditional method.

The Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia is the result of the adaptation process of Antioquian settlers, who arrived in the 19th century. This process persists today, creating an economy and culture deeply rooted in the coffee production tradition.

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