Cisneros Square and the Vásquez and Carré buildings

In front of you is one of the places that best tell Medellín's ups and downs. This was Guayaquil, the city's liveliest district, and it is where Medellín has tried to start over more than once.

1The market and Carré's buildings

At the end of the 19th century the market left the main square and moved to a covered market hall built on this marshy land, opened in 1894. Opposite it, the businessman Eduardo Vásquez Jaramillo commissioned the French architect Charles Émile Carré, the same man behind the Metropolitan Cathedral, to design the two brick buildings you still see. Around them grew Guayaquil, a district of trade, hotels, bars and travellers.

The square was named after Francisco Javier Cisneros, the Cuban engineer who drove the Antioquia Railway forward and died in New York in 1898.

2Decline and light

Over time the market and the buildings were abandoned. On 7 April 1968 a fire destroyed part of the market hall, and the area went through decades of decay. Early this century the city bet on bringing it back: in February 2005 the Park of Lights opened, with some 300 light poles, and in June that year the EPM Library rose on the site of the old market. The Vásquez and Carré buildings were restored.

Where the city's biggest market once stood, there is now a public library.

3What to look for

• The Vásquez and Carré buildings, with their green doors and balconies.
• The light poles, which at night turn into an illuminated forest.
• The guadua bamboo planted among the poles, a nod to the Antioquian landscape.