Богота

Bogotá conducts its affairs at 2,640 metres, where the light is thin and the coffee is serious. The Andean capital spreads below the peaks of Monserrate and Guadalupe, its historic heart, La Candelaria, keeping colonial balconies, student cafés and the Botero donation's cheerful volumes; the Gold Museum nearby holds the world's greatest collection of pre-Hispanic goldwork — tens of thousands of pieces, including the raft of the El Dorado ceremony itself, the legend's actual golden object. On Sundays the city performs its most copied invention: the Ciclovía closes the avenues to cars, and a seventh of the population takes them over on wheels and foot.

Musically Bogotá has built Latin American weight: the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá — a Latin Grammy laureate and the city's civic pride — anchors a scene that runs from the Teatro Colón's gilt horseshoe to the choral societies of the universities. The concert record documents the Auditorio Fabio Lozano, the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University's fine concert hall, alongside the philharmonic — and the "Parque principal de Tocancipá", which is the main square of Tocancipá, a separate town north of the capital, flagged for the workbook. Gold in the museum, bicycles on the avenues, an orchestra with a Grammy: Bogotá runs on altitude and ambition.