Bogotá is Colombia's capital, cradled by chilly Andean peaks. The city's cultural epicenter is La Candelaria, the cobbled historic downtown to which most travelers gravitate.

Here, I would visit: 

1. The Museo del Oro, the Gold Museum that contains more than 55,000 pieces of gold and other materials from all of Colombia's major pre-Hispanic cultures.
2. The Iglesia de San Francisco, Bogotá's oldest surviving church, which was built between 1557 and 1621. In the atmospherically dark interior, with its extravagant pews, your eye would be immediately drawn to the gilded, U-shaped 17th-century altarpiece, the largest and most elaborate of its kind in the capital.