Comuna 13, also called San Javier, is one of Medellín’s most famous neighborhoods, and for a long time it was its most dangerous. The turnaround that followed is genuinely remarkable: a hillside that was effectively a war zone in 2002 is now the most visited place in the city, covered in murals, full of music, and studied by urban planners from around the world. But the full story is darker and more important than the tourist version, and worth understanding before you go.
Comuna 13
Origins of Comuna 13
Comuna 13 climbs the steep western hills of Medellín, thousands of brick-and-cement homes packed tightly up the slope. It began as an informal settlement in the 1960s and 70s, when families displaced by rural conflict across Antioquia built homes here, on unplanned land with no running water or electricity.
Its geography made it strategically valuable. The comuna connects directly to the San Juan highway, a key corridor out of the city, which made it useful for moving guns, drugs, and money. Through the 1980s and 90s, as Medellín suffered under cartel violence, the maze of narrow streets became a stronghold and transit point for armed groups. Left-wing guerrilla militias, the FARC’s urban Comandos Armados del Pueblo and the ELN, established deep control over the neighborhood, fighting gangs and each other for the territory.
The Conflict and Operation Orión
By 2002, Comuna 13 was one of the most violent places in one of the world’s most violent cities. The state had tried and failed repeatedly to take it back.
That October, two months into Álvaro Uribe’s presidency, the military launched Operation Orión, the largest urban military operation in Colombian history. More than a thousand soldiers and police, backed by helicopters, moved into the comuna. The heavy fighting lasted several days and succeeded in expelling the guerrilla militias. Homicides dropped sharply afterward, and for years this was held up as a clean success story.
It was not clean. According to Colombia’s Truth Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and rulings by the Medellín courts, Operation Orión and the period around it were carried out with the collaboration of right-wing paramilitaries, the Bloque Cacique Nutibara of the AUC, led by Diego Murillo, alias Don Berna. When the guerrillas were pushed out, the paramilitaries took control of the comuna and held it.
What followed was quieter and in some ways worse. Rather than leaving bodies in the streets, the paramilitaries disappeared people, residents accused of having sympathized with the guerrillas. Disappearance kept the official homicide numbers low while terrorizing the community, which is part of why the neighborhood could be presented as “pacified.” Human rights organizations have documented roughly 180 forced disappearances in Comuna 13 between 2001 and 2003.
Many of the disappeared are believed to have been dumped at La Escombrera, a vast rubble pile above the neighborhood, considered one of the largest urban mass graves in Colombia. For more than two decades, families’ demands to search it went largely ignored. Then, in late 2024, forensic teams finally recovered human remains there, reigniting the national reckoning over what really happened during Orión. Many murals in Comuna 13 today are about exactly this, the violence, the missing, and the families still searching.
The Transformation
The change that made Comuna 13 famous began in 2006, under Mayor Sergio Fajardo, and it was built on a different theory: that you reduce violence by connecting and investing in a neighborhood, not just occupying it.
The investments were concrete. A library park brought computers, books, and green space. In 2008, a Metrocable line from San Javier connected the hillside to the city’s transit network, turning an hour-plus commute into minutes, this was the “cable car,” not a new metro station, since the San Javier station itself had opened years earlier. A viaduct gave pedestrians and motorcyclists a safer route through the community.
The centerpiece arrived in 2011: a series of covered outdoor escalators built into the steep heart of the comuna, replacing a climb of around 350 steps, the equivalent of a 28-story building. For elderly and less mobile residents, it was transformative. As one community leader put it, the escalators made people feel like they were part of something bigger, something they owned.
The approach worked well enough that in 2013, Medellín was named the world’s most innovative city. The escalators are now a top tourist attraction, but their real significance is what they represented: the moment the neighborhood started to believe it could change.
Comuna 13 Today
Today thousands of visitors come daily, and the comuna is generally safe to visit with common sense. Carry as little as possible, keep an eye on your valuables, wear a backpack on your front, and, most importantly, stay on the main walkways. The streets are a maze, and it is easy to wander onto private property or get lost.
What you find is a community full of street art, music, and performance. Local guides and artists run tours that share the neighborhood’s history from the inside, which is by far the best way to experience it, both because the context is essential and because the money supports the community whose story you are there to learn.
The Street Art
Every mural in Comuna 13 means something. The walls, doors, and staircases tell the story of the violence the neighborhood lived through and its hopes for what comes next. There are dozens of large-scale works, concentrated around the escalators. Painting one is not a free-for-all: an artist needs permission from the community’s lead artists and from the owner of the wall.
Graffiti tours led by local guides walk you through the meaning behind each piece. The best-known artist from the comuna is Chota13, whose bold colors and imagery of resistance and hope made him a defining figure here. Others include YesGraff, whose work centers on peace and social justice, and Yorch.Art, who blends surrealist elements with local symbols into pieces about the community’s struggles and resilience.
When to Visit
Go in the morning. The area gets crowded in the afternoon, and Medellín’s microclimate means low cloud and haze often roll in later in the day, dulling the views over the city. Most tours start around 9 or 10 am; if you can pick a private start time, choose one of those.
How to Get There
The nearest metro station is San Javier, the western terminus of Line B. From Poblado station, take Line A (red) north toward Niquía four stops to San Antonio, then transfer to Line B and ride to the end at San Javier.
From the station it is a 20 to 30 minute uphill walk to the escalators and the main mural area, or you can take bus 225i or 221i, exit the station, turn right, and look for the green bus stop at the traffic lights. Most group tours meet at San Javier station, so you do not have to navigate alone. While you are there, the San Javier Metrocable is worth a ride for the layered views over this side of the city.
Further Reading and Watching
For more depth, the documentary El Testigo (The Witness), following conflict photographer Jesús Abad Colorado, offers a powerful look at the violence that shaped Comuna 13 and Colombia more broadly; it has been available on Netflix. Two books worth seeking out are District 13: The Drama of the Armed Conflict in Medellín, Colombia, on the human toll of the conflict, and Comuna 13: Art and Culture as a Means of Social Transformation (with a foreword by J Balvin), on the neighborhood’s reinvention through art.
