Avenida La Playa: the buried stream

In front of you is an avenue, but listen carefully: there is water underneath. This is the Santa Elena stream, the old Aná brook beside which the town was born.

1A stream turned into a promenade

In the 19th century its banks filled with houses set in large gardens, and the writer Tomás Carrasquilla described them as the obligatory promenade of fashionable society. From 1924 the stream was channelled and, little by little, covered over to make way for cars. Of those mansions only the Casa Barrientos survives, a few blocks west, and people say the spirits of its former residents still roam it. The Palace of Fine Arts, designed in 1925 by Nel Rodríguez, is home to the Society for Public Improvements.

2Water spirits

In Antioquia, streams have myths of their own. The Madremonte, a woman covered in moss and leaves, bathed in them during storms, and that, farmers said, was why they ran muddy. She hunted down unfaithful husbands and people who quarrelled over boundaries. The Llorona wandered the banks searching for her children. The Hojarasquín of the woods protected the forests, and the Patetarro, his leg stuck in a bamboo pot, spread rot through the mines.

These figures live in oral tradition; some scholars link the Madremonte to ancient Indigenous goddesses of forests and rivers.

3What to look for

• The Palace of Fine Arts and its Art Deco lines; inside, its auditorium is octagonal.
• The tree-lined central strip, which marks the hidden channel.
• The drains and gratings: on rainy days you can sometimes hear the water.