Filandia, Quindio: What to Know Before You Go

Filandia is seven kilometres up a spur road. It is not on the way to anywhere, which is the whole reason it still looks the way it does, and it is also the reason people who try to add it to a Salento day end up doing neither properly. Here is what the town actually is, what protects it and what does not, and how the roads really work.

Written by the Safe Transfers Colombia team. Every figure below is sourced to a Colombian authority, and where two authorities disagree we show both rather than pick the one we like.

Where Filandia is, and why it stayed quiet

Filandia is in the north of Quindío, at 04°40’48.7″ north and 75°39’48.5″ west. The Gobernación del Quindío puts it at roughly 1.910 metres above sea level with an average temperature of 18 °C. The municipality’s own Ficha Básica Municipal gives 1.917 metres, 108,60 square kilometres of territory and 27 veredas, with a 2022 population of 12.570.

It was founded on 20 August 1878 by colonists from Antioquia, part of the same southward push that produced most of this department, and erected as a municipality in 1892. Before that it was a caserío of Cartago under the name Nudilleros.

The thing that matters for a visitor is the geography of the road. Filandia is not on the route between two other places. It sits at the end of a spur, and you have to mean to go there.

What actually protects the historic centre, and what does not

This is the part most write-ups get wrong by implication, because they describe Filandia in the same breath as towns that carry national protection.

The centre is a municipal heritage asset, not a national one

Filandia’s urban centre was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural by Acuerdo 074 del 27 de diciembre de 2000, in the chapter of the land-use plan dealing with urban zoning, Capítulo IX, article 65. That declaration is municipal in scope. It is a real legal instrument and it governs what owners may do to facades and structures, but it is not the same class of protection as a national declaration, and it is administered locally rather than by the Ministerio de Cultura.

We are making the distinction because it is the honest one, not to diminish the town. What it means in practice is that the continuity of that streetscape rests on a municipal instrument and on the owners who keep to it.

The baskets have no protection at all

Filandia is known nationally for cestería, the basketwork woven in the barrio San José from yaret, plantain fibre and wicker. The Gobernación describes whole families given over to it, weaving baskets, trunks, bags and lamps.

And yet the department’s own cultural diagnostic for Filandia answers the question of whether the municipality has any manifestation recognised as intangible heritage with a single word:

La entidad territorial cuenta con alguna manifestación reconocida como patrimonio inmaterial por parte del municipio: No

The same document calls cestería un elemento cultural valioso para el municipio and records the materials as guadua and calceta de plátano. So the craft is documented, valued and unprotected. If you buy a basket in Filandia you are buying from a living tradition that carries no formal safeguard, which is a reason to buy from the makers rather than a reseller.

The conservation district above the town

The forest north and west of Filandia is not scenery. It is a declared protected area with a paper trail.

The Corporación Autónoma Regional del Quindío declared it a Parque Regional Natural by Acuerdo 020 del 22 de diciembre de 2006, then reclassified it as a Distrito de Conservación de Suelos by Acuerdo 012 del 30 de junio de 2011. The district covers about 4.910 hectares across two municipalities and seven veredas:

Average altitude across the district is about 2.005 metres. Inside it, the CRQ separately administers the Reserva Forestal Natural y de Investigación Bremen-La Popa, which its own environmental synthesis for Filandia puts at 731,2 hectares in the upper Barbas and Roble basins. The Gobernación’s tourism listing describes Bremen-La Popa as 1.200 hectares with more than 700 developed with interpretive trails. The two figures are not the same thing and we are not going to pretend they are: one is the managing authority describing the reserve it administers, the other is a tourism page describing a visitor area. The CRQ figure is the reserve; the 4.910 hectares are the district around it.

What the water does

Filandia’s four main hydrographic units are the río Barbas, the quebrada San Felipe, the río Roble and the quebrada Buenavista. The CRQ records that together they suministran agua a una población superior a los 120.000 habitantes, across eight municipalities in three departments.

That is the argument for the conservation district in one sentence, and it is a larger claim than tourism. The town’s own supply is gravity-fed, run by ESAQUÍN with full coverage in the urban area, and the CRQ rates the general condition of the network as regular. There are fifteen rural aqueducts besides.

The wax palm is here too, and in worse shape

The Salento valley gets the attention, but the CRQ lists fifteen threatened plant species in the upper Barbas basin, three of them critically endangered. One of the three is Ceroxylon quindiuense, the palma de cera, Colombia’s national tree. The other two are copachi, Magnolia gilbertoi, and comino crespo, Aniba perutilis.

If you have already read our Salento and Valle de Cocora guide, this is the same species, an hour away, in a basin where the authority classes it as critically endangered rather than as a photograph.

Getting to Filandia

There is one turn that matters. From either direction on the Autopista del Café, you leave the highway at the vereda Cruces, where the Gobernación notes the National Police station stands, and drive seven kilometres of paved, signposted road into town. The turn is the same whether you are coming up from Armenia or down from Pereira.

Coming down from Antioquia, the long corridor is our Medellín to Coffee Region route, which ends in the same place.

How far is it, really

Two Colombian government sources give different answers, and the gap is large enough to plan badly around.

• The Ficha Básica Municipal for Filandia, the municipal record, gives the distance to Armenia as 27 kilómetros 200 metros.
• A departmental distance table gives Armenia to Filandia as 15,86 kilómetros.

The figure that matters to a driver is road distance, and the higher one is the one consistent with a route that runs out along the autopista and then seven kilometres up a spur. We would plan on the municipal figure. We are not going to publish a journey time, because that depends on the hour and on the autopista, and a number invented for a guide is worse than no number.

Filandia and Salento are not a combined afternoon

This is the single most useful thing on this page.

On a map the two towns look adjacent. In routing terms they are on separate spurs. Salento runs north off its own approach; Filandia runs off the Autopista del Café at Cruces. Getting between them means coming back down to the main road and going up the other side. Both towns are small and both are worth unhurried time, and the standard tour-listing promise of Filandia plus Salento plus the Valle de Cocora in one day is a lot of that day spent in a vehicle.

What is in town, and what is not

• Calle del Tiempo Detenido. North of the main plaza. The Gobernación’s own description is the useful one: the houses on both sides, bar necessary repairs, have kept their original structure and appearance. The Colegio Bethlemitas is the set piece.
• Mirador Colina Iluminada. Twenty-seven metres tall, built in Caribbean mangle with regional zapán and macana woods, with a blue butterfly mosaic inside and balconies at several levels. On a clear day the view takes in most of Quindío, Pereira and towns in northern Valle del Cauca. Open 10:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and until 21:00 at weekends, with a café at weekends.
• The baskets, barrio San José. Where the cestería is actually made. There is an artisan shop on the south-east corner of the plaza, but the barrio is the source.
• Cañón del río Barbas. The river rises at about 2.200 metres at Morro Azul in the Cordillera Central. Howler monkeys are present, and biological corridors connect the canyon to the Bremen reserve.

What the forest holds

Filandia has around 2.721 hectares of natural forest in the CRQ’s inventory. Within the municipality the corporation documents eight endemic bird species and three near-endemic, with two of note on the threatened lists:

• Pava caucana, Penelope perspicax, endangered.
• Tangara multicolor, Chlorochrysa nitidissima, vulnerable.

Among mammals the CRQ lists the mono aullador, the howler monkey, among species facing some degree of threat, alongside the guagua loba, the gurre coletrapo, the zorro, the cusumbo, the perro de monte, the nutria and the guatín.

The forest inventory figure dates from a 1997 CRQ survey as cited in the municipal synthesis, so treat it as the order of magnitude rather than as this year’s number.

The coffee landscape

Filandia is one of the ten Quindío municipalities whose areas are mapped inside the Paisaje Cultural Cafetero de Colombia, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2011 under criteria (v) and (vi), with 141.120 hectares of inscribed property and a 207.000 hectare buffer zone across Caldas, Quindío, Risaralda and Valle del Cauca, which UNESCO describes as six farming landscapes including eighteen urban centres.

The listing is about a production system rather than a view, which is worth holding on to here: the fincas around Filandia are working farms, and the twelve hotel establishments the CRQ counted in the municipality total a capacity of 233 people. This is a small place that has not yet been rebuilt around visitors.

Questions people actually ask

How do you get to Filandia?

Off the Autopista del Café at the vereda Cruces, then seven kilometres of paved, signposted road into town. The same turn serves traffic from both Armenia and Pereira. The two nearest airports are El Edén in Armenia and Matecaña in Pereira.

How far is Filandia from Armenia?

The municipal record gives 27 kilómetros 200 metros. A departmental distance table gives 15,86 kilómetros. We plan on the municipal figure, because it is the one consistent with the actual road.

Can you do Filandia and Salento in one day?

You can, but the two towns sit on separate spurs off the main road, so a good part of the day goes on getting between them. If the Valle de Cocora is also on the list, one day is not enough. Two nights makes both towns work.

Is Filandia’s historic centre officially protected?

Yes, but at municipal level. Acuerdo 074 del 27 de diciembre de 2000 declared the urban centre a Bien de Interés Cultural within the municipal land-use plan. There is no national declaration.

Is the basket weaving protected heritage?

No. The department’s cultural diagnostic for Filandia records that the municipality has no manifestation recognised as intangible heritage. The craft is documented and valued but carries no formal safeguard.

What are the Mirador Colina Iluminada opening hours?

10:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and until 21:00 at weekends, per the Gobernación del Quindío. It stands 27 metres tall and sits outside the town on the road toward Quimbaya, so it is a separate stop rather than a walk from the plaza.

Is there a national park at Filandia?

Not a national one. Above the town is the Distrito de Conservación de Suelos Barbas-Bremen, a regional protected area administered by the CRQ, about 4.910 hectares, of which 3.323 are in Filandia.

Are there wax palms at Filandia?

Yes, and the CRQ classes Ceroxylon quindiuense as critically endangered in the upper Barbas basin. It is the same national tree that draws people to the Valle de Cocora, in a place where the authority treats it as a conservation emergency.

Is Filandia better than Salento?

They are different errands. Salento is the gateway to the wax palm valley and the national park behind it, and it is busy. Filandia is smaller, quieter, and the reason to go is the street, the tower and the workshops. Most people who see both prefer the one they were not expecting.