Yolombo

Yolombó lies in the gold-bearing hills of northeastern Antioquia. An Indigenous settlement of that name was recorded in the sixteenth century, and San Lorenzo de Yolombó later became a colonial mining centre. Its streams and surrounding hills attracted people seeking gold, while the settlement grew into one of the important places of the province, drawing miners and merchants into its mountainous hinterland.

By the middle of the seventeenth century Yolombó had a substantial Spanish community, as recorded by its parish priest Mateo de Castrillón. Gold brought prosperity during the eighteenth century, but mining declined towards the end of that century as accessible deposits became exhausted. The town’s wealth and its mining society left a lasting place in the history of Antioquia.