Bogotá's New Megamurals

Recently, the city sponsored these huge murals on warehouse and factory walls in the otherwise very gray and gritty Puente Aranda neighborhood. The murals, which line two streets near the Carrera 53 Transmilenio station - and which we visited during a street art bike tour - transformed the neighborhood's atmosphere.

A graffiti artist friend told me that because Mayor Peñalosa is disliked by the artists' community, some of them did only their second-best work here. But the paintings looked fine to me!

Ironically, however, the neighborhood residents walking by the murals ignored them, perhaps because they passed by every day. And these are yet another example of Bogotá's best street art - like those beside the bullfighting stadium and the ones behind the Central Cemetery - located in out-of-the-way sites where few people see them, unless they go out of their way.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours