Casa Terracota

Biking from the town center to the terra-cotta museum is no problem, it’s only about one miles away and there are not many hills. Unfortunately for us when we arrived we were informed that due to COVID-19 we would not be able to go inside the house, and that the tour would be entirely around the outside of the house. We were okay with this.

We joined a tour group and were the only English speakers there. Sev and I don’t have the greatest Spanish ever, especially speaking, but we could follow along with the basic ideas being communicated during the tour in Spanish. Plus the tour guide also spoke English and kindly checked our understanding and answered any questions we might have had.

The house looked really cool—it was made by an artist, Octavio Mendoza, over the course of 20 years. It has three bedrooms for himself and his two children. He’s still alive and sometimes drops by the house to live for a week or two, at which time the house is closed to visitors.

Although we couldn’t go inside, we could see all of the rooms from the large windows. We could even go on the roof of the house and see the outdoor kitchen area. It was really interesting how Octavio Mendoza managed to blend the shape of the house with the surrounding mountains, and the garden and statue areas were cool.

The tour lasted about an hour, which was just the right amount of time. The terra-cotta house might not be the highlight of your adventures in Colombia, but it’s a main attraction in Villa de Leyva and worth swinging by if you have a chance.