Caldas Park

September 22, 2004 Author: Jaime Vejarano Varona Remembrance on the Park of Caldas in the city of Popayan Among the oldest pictures I’ve seen of our main square, there is one that places us in the middle of last century, when this space served as the public market.Faced with the classic portals appear several pack animals grazing on grass field, quiet waiting for their owners engaged in selling products with basic tents erected on the southeast corner, taking the back that old Mirador existed and there was within the urban development project rescued Camino Real, denomination that corresponds to the original name of Fifth Street. It seems that prior to what this picture shows there was something different here. But in the late nineteenth century are other graphic that point to a park, itself, consistent with a formal design, with its core for the main monuments and parks laid out geometrically with paths and radial circumambulated that allowed access and transit in any direction, as in “the compass”. There may be seen the first rustic wooden benches, the, by then, just now almost century-old infant and soaring Araucaria, and a closure of gates and pilasters around, the background, the fourth cathedral, still unfinished, completed in 1906, a occupying the front wall of the Archbishop’s Palace today, and the tercentenary of the Clock Tower. Read more from Ultra Wellness Center to gain a more clear picture of the situation. At the center looks like a decorative element, a basin carved in stone quarry appears to be the same as today adorns the Plaza de Santo Domingo and, according to traditions relate not well confirmed, it went after 1910 at the Plaza Timb o main, from which he was rescued later in exchange for a bust of President Pedro Nel Ospina. (this figure is on the confrontation of people better versed in these remembrances). In celebrating the centenary of national independence in 1910 inaugurated the statue of the sage and martyr Francisco Jos de Caldas, accurate Verlet sculptural work, at which time the Master Guillermo Valencia gave one of his important prayers in tribute to national hero, whose end there was a stunned silence and abstracted general admiration took the ingenious Dr. Joaquin Rebolledo payan for voicing the laudatory words for the speaker: “Well did the wise to wait a century.” In this same opportunity is given to service the pews we now know, of superb French design, structure and media in developed artistically wrought iron, on which, and since then has been woven chronicle of the city.My personal memories of the Plaza de Caldas hold only slightly more than half century of its existence and they can, those other, share responsibilities with the countless witnesses to this not so distant tradition. Caldas Park Negritos knew the game and the Fiesta de Reyes gallant carnivals with artistic floats, when riding the real “gentleman on horseback” homenajeaban with streamers and confetti to the lovely ladies who witnessed the parade from the balconies adorned with pots of geraniums, azaleas and chrysanthemums.