Comuna 13 in May: When Silleteros Rehearse in Secret

In May, when Medellín's afternoon rains arrive like clockwork at three, something quiet and extraordinary happens in the steep callejones of Comuna 13. Behind corrugated metal doors and on hidden rooftop terraces, silletero families — the flower-farming artisans who will dazzle the world at August's Feria de las Flores — begin their secret rehearsals. Wooden silletas lean against graffiti-covered walls, half-dressed in practice blooms, as children learn choreography passed down through generations.

This guide takes you inside Medellín's most culturally electric neighbourhood during its most underrated month. May sits in the sweet spot between high season crowds and the August festival frenzy, offering intimate access to traditions tourists rarely witness. You will discover where to find silletero workshops, which street artists are redefining the barrio's visual identity, where to eat like a local on the escalators' upper reaches, and why the rainy season makes Comuna 13's famous outdoor galleries shimmer rather than suffer.

1. The Hidden Silletero Workshops of Sector El Salado

Walk past the final electric escalator and turn right where the mural of the hummingbird meets a rusted staircase. Here, in Sector El Salado, three silletero families open their talleres informally to visitors each May. The Londoño workshop, tucked behind Carrera 109 near the water tank, is the most welcoming. Doña Gloria has been building silletas for thirty-one years and will show you her sketching process without prompting.

May is when the structural frames get assembled — enormous wooden backpacks weighing up to seventy-five kilograms before a single flower is added. You will see Gloria's grandson, Sebastián, bending guadua bamboo over a small gas flame, shaping the curved supports that must distribute weight across the carrier's shoulders and hips. The craftsmanship is engineering as much as art.

Ask to see the cuaderno — the family notebook where each year's silleta design is sketched in coloured pencil. These books are private heirlooms, but if you arrive with a small gift of pan de bono from the bakery downstairs and genuine curiosity, the family often shares pages dating back to the nineteen-nineties. Photography of the current year's design is strictly off-limits, and you should respect this without asking twice.

The rehearsals themselves happen on Sunday mornings around seven, before the neighbourhood wakes fully. Carriers practise walking the steep streets with weighted frames, building the specific endurance needed for the August parade route. Standing on the corner with a tinto in hand, watching these quiet processions, is one of Medellín's most profound cultural experiences.

2. Riding the Escalators in the Rain: Why May Light Transforms the Murals

Comuna 13's famous outdoor escalators were installed in 2011 to replace dangerous footpaths, but in May they become something else entirely: a moving gallery under shifting light. When afternoon rain slicks the concrete walls, the murals by artists like Chota and Jeihhco take on a luminous, almost lacquered quality. Colours deepen. Reflections double the imagery on wet ground. Bring a compact umbrella and ride slowly.

The six escalator sections cover about twenty-eight storeys of hillside elevation. Most guided tours rush you through in forty-five minutes, but in May's low season you can linger without being swept along by crowds. Stop at the third section, where a massive mural of intertwined hands marks the wall. Here, artist Perro Loco often works on new pieces in the mornings, and he is approachable if you speak even basic Spanish.

The best photographic light arrives between four-thirty and five-fifteen, after the rain clears and golden hour hits the west-facing walls. Colours that look flat under midday sun suddenly glow with saturated warmth. Professional photographers know this window, which is why you will occasionally spot someone with a medium-format camera crouched near the top escalator during precisely these minutes.

Avoid the common mistake of only photographing murals. The real visual story of May is the juxtaposition: bright silleta flowers drying on windowsills, children playing in rain puddles beneath revolutionary art, and elderly women watching it all from plastic chairs. These human details define Comuna 13 far more than any painted wall.

Stay in Medellín

Top-rated hotels near Medellín

Best locations · Verified reviews · Free cancellation

View deals

Expedia →

3. Eating at Casa Kolacho: Street Food Above the Skyline

Casa Kolacho, located at the top of the escalator system on Calle 34 number 107A-80, began as a hip-hop collective and evolved into one of Comuna 13's cultural anchors. Their rooftop terrace serves empanadas de pipián and arepas de chócolo that rival anything in El Poblado at a fraction of the price. Order the limonada de coco and sit facing northwest for the valley view.

The menu rotates informally based on what vendors bring that morning, but the constant is the bandeja paisa served on a metal tray with a portion size that assumes you have been climbing stairs all day. The chicharrón arrives crackling and is best eaten immediately. Pair it with the house agua de panela served warm — this is not a tourist affectation but how locals drink it during rainy May afternoons.

What makes Casa Kolacho essential is not only the food but the context. Your money directly funds community art programs, breakdancing workshops, and the graffiti tours that provide employment to young people who might otherwise have few options. The collective was founded in 2002, during the worst years of the neighbourhood's conflict, and every meal here carries that weight of purpose.

For something more refined, walk three minutes downhill to Restaurante Donde Magy on the same street. Magy herself serves a cazuela de fríjoles every Wednesday and Friday that draws office workers from across the city. Arrive before noon or expect a twenty-minute wait at the four communal tables.

4. The Hip-Hop Archives at Museo de la Memoria y la Transformación

Housed in a renovated community centre at the base of the escalators, this small but powerful museum documents how hip-hop, breakdancing, and graffiti culture literally replaced violence as the dominant language of Comuna 13's youth. In May, when temporary exhibitions rotate, you will often find photography collections by residents rather than outside artists. The curation is unflinching and deeply personal.

The permanent audio installation on the second floor is the highlight. Sit in the darkened room and listen through headphones as former combatants, mothers, and teenagers narrate their experiences of Operación Orión and its aftermath. The recordings are in Spanish with available English transcripts. Give yourself at least thirty minutes here — rushing through this space would be a disservice to the voices preserved within it.

In May 2024, the museum began hosting silletero-themed talks every second Saturday, connecting the flower tradition to broader themes of resilience and cultural identity. These events draw fifty to eighty attendees, mostly local families, and represent exactly the kind of experience that mass tourism has not yet commodified. Check the museo's Instagram feed the week you arrive for scheduling confirmation.

Photography is permitted in most areas, but the audio room asks that you refrain. Admission is free, though a donation box near the exit supports the archive digitisation project. Twenty thousand pesos — roughly five dollars — is a meaningful contribution. The museum closes at four on weekdays and five on Saturdays.

5. Dancing Salsa at Salon Amador on a Wednesday Night

While not technically inside Comuna 13, Salon Amador at Calle 44 number 70-32 in the Laureles neighbourhood is where many of the barrio's best dancers go when the sun sets on Wednesday evenings. This is not a tourist salsa night. The floor is scuffed. The speakers distort slightly at high volume. The dancers are devastating. If you have any salsa ability whatsoever, May's uncrowded nights are the time to test it.

Cover charge is fifteen thousand pesos including one aguardiente. The house band starts at nine-thirty, but the real energy ignites after eleven when the DJ takes over and shifts from salsa romántica to salsa dura. You will recognise the transition when couples stop chatting and the dance floor compresses to standing room only. Position yourself near the bar with a clear sightline to the floor.

If you do not dance, come anyway. The people-watching alone justifies the visit. Elderly couples who have been dancing together for decades share the floor with teenagers from the surrounding comunas, and the intergenerational exchange is electric. Order a Club Colombia beer and empanadas from the woman with the cart outside the entrance — she has been stationed there for nine years.

A practical note: taxis from Comuna 13 to Salon Amador cost roughly twelve thousand pesos and take fifteen minutes via the San Juan road. Use InDriver or DiDi rather than hailing from the street. After midnight, have the bar staff call a trusted driver — they keep a list behind the counter for exactly this purpose.

Stay in Medellín

Top-rated hotels near Medellín

Best locations · Verified reviews · Free cancellation

View deals

Expedia →

6. The Flower Farms of Santa Elena: Where the Silletas Are Born

Thirty minutes east of Comuna 13 by bus, the vereda of Santa Elena sits at 2,500 metres elevation where the air thins and flower farms carpet the hillsides. This is the ancestral home of the silletero tradition, and in May the farms are actively cultivating the blooms that will eventually adorn August's silletas. Finca Silleteros at Vereda El Plan offers informal visits — call ahead to Don Héctor at the number posted on their roadside sign.

The flowers grown here are not the exotic orchids tourists expect. They are humble species — cartuchos, hortensias, gladiolos, and claveles — chosen for their hardiness and vivid colour when massed together. Don Héctor will walk you through his greenhouse explaining which varieties survive the parade route's six-hour exposure to sun and which must be inserted into the silleta only hours before departure.

May's rains make the farms intensely green and photogenic, but bring proper footwear — the paths between greenhouses become streams of red clay that will destroy any shoe not designed for mud. Rubber boots can be borrowed at most farms if you ask. The altitude also brings genuine cold after three in the afternoon, so carry a light jacket even if Medellín's city centre felt warm that morning.

Catch the Santa Elena bus from Terminal del Norte — it departs every forty minutes, costs five thousand pesos, and drops you at the central plaza where motorcycle taxis wait to shuttle visitors to individual farms for three thousand pesos. Time your visit for morning, when flowers are at peak freshness and the cloud forest views stretch uninterrupted before afternoon mist rolls in.

7. Graffiti Tour with AK Crew: The Artists Behind the Walls

Forget the dozens of generic walking tours advertised on hostel bulletin boards. The only graffiti tour worth your time in Comuna 13 is led by members of AK Crew, the original collective that began painting these walls in the early two-thousands as an act of reclamation. Tours depart from the base of the escalators at ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, costing forty-five thousand pesos per person.

Your guide will likely be Kbala or Yurika, both practising muralists who can explain not only the artistic technique but the political context of each wall. They will take you behind the main tourist corridor to see works in progress — raw sketches outlined in charcoal on unpainted concrete, waiting for their moment. In May, the crew often experiments with new pieces before the August crowds arrive to judge them.

The tour lasts approximately two and a half hours and includes sections that involve steep stairclimbing away from the escalators. Physical fitness is mildly relevant. Bring water. The guides will stop at a local tienda midway where you can buy Colombiana soda and recover. They also point out which souvenir vendors are community members and which are outsiders reselling imported goods — a distinction that matters for where your money lands.

Book directly through AK Crew's Instagram page rather than through aggregator platforms. They lose thirty percent in commissions on third-party bookings, and these are artists funding their practice through tour income. A direct message in Spanish or English receives a reply within hours. Groups are capped at twelve, and May dates rarely sell out more than a day in advance.