bogota

Pope Francis arrived in Colombia on Wednesday with a message of unity for a nation deeply divided by a peace deal that ended a five-decade war with Marxist FARC rebels but left many victims of the bloodshed wary of the fraught healing process. Francis, making his 20th foreign trip since becoming pontiff in 2013 and his fifth to his native Latin America, started his visit in Colombian capital Bogota. He will travel later in the week to the cities of Villavicencio, Medellin and Cartagena.

When my guide picked me up at the airport, she told me Bogota is a business city, not a tourist city. While she was an enthusiastic host and seemed to know everything else about her hometown, I had to disagree with her on this one.

Authorities in Colombia’s capital Bogota have agreed to not remove graffiti as long as the street art is performed “in a responsible way,” following a meeting with graffiti artists who previously had claimed they were being persecuted.

The British Museum began an exhibition on Thursday titled “Beyond El Dorado,” featuring a new perspective on pre-Hispanic Colombia through works of gold and precious goods on loan from Bogota’s Museo del Oro. “The title is ‘Beyond El Dorado’ and that’s exactly what the exhibition does,” the curator of the exhibit, Elisenda Vila Llonch, told Colombia Reports.