Convento y Cerro de la Popa

The original wooden chapel on the hill went up in 1607, built by the Discalced Augustinian friar Vicente Mallol. A year later the convent itself was raised, paid for by a wealthy Neapolitan named Fabricio Sánchez, and Fray Alonso de la Cruz Paredes became its first superior. By 1612 the building was nearly finished, about 15,000 ducats spent on it, a large sum for the period, and the whole project took roughly six or seven years [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa].

The founding legend is the reason locals still call the cliff below the hill Salto del Cabrón. The story holds that the Virgin appeared to Fray Alonso and ordered him to build a church on the hill closest to Cartagena, where a goat-shaped evil spirit was said to be worshipped. The friar threw the goat from the top, and the name stuck [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa].

The hill's height made it both a landmark and a target. English pirate Francis Drake attacked the city with 23 ships and 2,500 men in 1585, and the convent was hit in later raids too. Unlike the walled city below, La Popa had no fortification of its own, only its distance and elevation, which meant it survived without being destroyed but needed repeated repair [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa].

During the wars of independence, the convent was the site of a repelled surprise attack on the night of 11 November 1815, when troops loyal to the Spanish commander Pablo Morillo tried to retake the hill and were beaten back [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa].

When republican troops later entered Cartagena, the Augustinian friars had already been forced out and the convent stood empty, used at times as a barracks. Simón Bolívar himself stayed there with his regiment. Tradition holds that a cannonball fired from Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, on the opposite hill, passed within centimeters of his head as he leaned out of a window on the convent's upper floor [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa]. The friars did not return until 1961, when the convent and its hermitage were handed back to the Augustinian Recollects, who still run it today as a working religious museum alongside the cloister [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa. Santuariolapopa.com].

The complex is a working sanctuary, not a ruin. The official site lists a church, a cloister, and a small religious museum with items tied to the order's history in Cartagena, plus what santuariolapopa.com itself calls a 360-degree view over the city, recognizing how the whole layout of Cartagena reads from the top [santuariolapopa.com]. The Mass schedule is one of the few figures verified against the official site directly: Saturday at 7:30 a.m., and Sunday at 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

The biggest date on the calendar is 2 February, the feast of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, La Popa's patron. Crowds of devotees walk up on foot from before dawn that day, the one occasion the climb is done deliberately and in numbers, a tradition unrelated to the tourist safety advice for every other day of the year [Wikipedia, Convento de la Popa]. Outside that one date, expect a quiet hilltop, the sanctuary's own devotional program, and the view, rather than a crowded attraction.

La Popa is not walkable from the historic center, and this is not a matter of distance alone. The approach road has a reputation for robberies, a warning repeated consistently by tour operators rather than published by any government agency, so treat it as local operational knowledge rather than an official rule [independent operator reporting, cross-checked]. The standard advice, the same one covered in full on this guide's safety and scams page, is a taxi that waits for you at the top and brings you back down, or a guided tour that includes the hill as a stop.

An unofficial moto-taxi flagged down at the base of the hill is the option every source specifically warns against. It is cheaper and faster to arrange than a taxi that waits, and it is also the version of this trip that removes the one safeguard that matters, someone with an interest in bringing you back down safely. If your hotel or a private guide can add La Popa to a day that also covers Castillo San Felipe, that combination uses one transport booking for both hills instead of arranging the trip twice.