In This Guide
The electric escalators in Comuna 13 don't start running until 6 a.m., but the painters are already up. I watched a woman named Ledys mix acrylics on a piece of cardboard at 5:40 on a Wednesday morning, her back to the valley below, blocking out the eyes of a figure three meters tall on a retaining wall along Calle 13B. No tourists. No reggaeton from the souvenir stalls. Just the scrape of a palette knife and a dog asleep on the warm concrete.
Most visitors arrive in Comuna 13 around 11 a.m., funnel through the graffiti tour circuit in ninety minutes, buy a coconut lemonade, and leave. They see finished walls. They don't see the arguments about color, the half-painted layers that get abandoned, the way a mural changes meaning when someone paints over someone else's work. Dawn is when the neighborhood still belongs to itself.
1. Why the murals keep changing (and why that matters)
Comuna 13's walls are not a gallery. They're a living argument. Murals get painted over — sometimes within weeks — because new artists earn wall space from community leaders, because political messages shift, because someone simply runs out of patience with last year's palette. The turnover is part of the point. A mural about Operación Orión, the 2002 military assault that killed and displaced hundreds of residents in San Javier, might sit next to a cartoon toucan advertising a local juice stand. That dissonance isn't carelessness. It's the neighborhood processing forty years of conflict in real time, on surfaces you can touch.
The guides who run the midday tours will tell you about the escalators as symbols of urban renewal. That framing isn't wrong, but it's incomplete. The escalators were a government project installed in 2011; the murals were there before them, painted by people who had no audience in mind beyond their own block. I think the most honest art in the comuna predates the tourism economy, and some of it has already been covered over by newer, more Instagram-friendly designs.
2. Getting there before the graffiti tours start
Take the Metro to San Javier station (Line B, 2,950 COP per ride as of early 2024). From the station, it's a ten-minute walk uphill to the base of the escalators. The route is straightforward — follow the signs for "Graffiti Tour" painted on walls and utility poles, which is ironic given that you're trying to beat the tours themselves.
Arrive by 6:15 a.m. The escalators begin operating at 6, and for the first hour the only foot traffic is residents heading to work or school. The light at that hour is gray-blue and cool, filtering through the valley haze. By 7:30, the first tour groups trickle in. By 9, the walkways along the escalators are congested enough that you'll spend more time stepping around selfie sticks than looking at walls.
Skip the midday guided tours entirely unless you specifically want historical narration. Most charge 40,000–80,000 COP per person, and the quality varies wildly. Some guides are former residents with firsthand memory of the conflict years; others are university students reading from a script. If you do want a guide, ask for Kbala Tours — they're run by a local hip-hop collective and go deeper into the music and art scenes. But at dawn, you don't need a guide. You need your eyes.
Pro tip:The escalators shut down for maintenance on random weekday mornings. Check with your hotel or hostel the night before. If they're closed, you can still walk the stairs — it's roughly 384 steps, and the murals line the path regardless.
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Expedia →3. The artists you might actually meet
Chota is the name most visitors recognize — his large-scale faces dominate several walls near the top of the escalator sequence. But the early-morning painters tend to be less famous. During my last visit in March, I met a teenager who went by Roca, working on a stencil piece about water access on a wall behind a tienda on Carrera 109. He'd been at it since 5 a.m. and seemed mildly annoyed that I was watching. Fair enough.
If someone is painting, don't photograph them without asking. I've watched tourists shove phone cameras within a meter of a painter's face. A simple "¿Puedo tomar una foto?" costs nothing. Most will say yes. Some will say no and that's the end of it.
The area around the escalators isn't the only place to look. Walk further into the residential streets off Carrera 109 and you'll find walls that no tour group visits — rougher, less polished, sometimes just tags, sometimes full compositions that nobody posts online because they're not on the tourist corridor.
4. Breakfast in the comuna, not in El Poblado
Empanadas at the tiendas near the escalator base cost 2,000–3,000 COP each. Filled with potato and ground beef, fried in the same oil that's been going since before you woke up, and better than anything you'll get at the brunch spots in El Poblado charging 35,000 COP for avocado toast. I'll stand by that.
Look for the women selling tinto — small cups of sweet black coffee — from thermoses on the walk up from the Metro. Around 1,000 COP. No latte art, no oat milk option. Just coffee that tastes like it was brewed for people who have somewhere to be.
There's a small restaurant called La Casa de la Memoria Culinaria on Calle 13B that opens around 7:30 a.m. and serves calentado — reheated rice and beans with a fried egg and arepa. A standard working breakfast, not a culinary performance, about 8,000 COP.
Pro tip:Bring small bills. Most tiendas and street vendors in the comuna don't accept cards or large denominations. A 50,000 COP note will get you a polite headshake.
5. When to leave
By 8:30 a.m., the character of the place shifts. Speakers mounted outside souvenir shops start playing reggaeton. Vendors set out racks of screen-printed T-shirts. A drone buzzes overhead for somebody's YouTube video. None of this is bad, exactly — it's an economy that feeds families in a neighborhood that had almost nothing twenty years ago. But it's a different experience from what you came for.
Leave by 9. Walk back down to San Javier station and take the Metro one stop west to the cable car at San Javier (Metrocable Line J) if you want to keep the morning going — the ride up to La Aurora gives a wide view of the valley and costs the same 2,950 COP fare.
Or just go back to wherever you're staying and sit with what you saw. A half-finished mural on a retaining wall. A dog on warm concrete. Paint drying in the early sun before anyone asked it to perform.
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Expedia →Essential tips
Metro fare is 2,950 COP per trip (as of early 2024). Load a Cívica card at any station to avoid buying individual tickets — it works on the Metro, Metrocable, and feeder buses.
Carry cash in denominations of 10,000 COP or smaller for the comuna. Street vendors and tiendas won't break a 50,000 or 100,000 note.
Ask before photographing artists at work or residents in doorways. Comuna 13 is a neighborhood, not a set. A quick ask in Spanish goes a long way — '¿Puedo?' is enough.
Escalator operating hours are roughly 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., but they close unpredictably for maintenance. Confirm the night before if an early visit matters to you.
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