Bogotá: A City Written in Stone

Monserrate — Faith, Fear, and the Mountain That Watches

High above Bogotá rises Monserrate—a mountain climbed for centuries by the faithful, the desperate, the curious, and the afraid.

This is not a book about a church.

It is a book about power, belief, and the human need to look upward in moments of fear.

Long before crosses crowned its summit, Monserrate was sacred. Indigenous peoples understood it as a place of mediation between worlds—not a throne of authority, but a silent presence. Spanish colonizers transformed it into something else: a platform of domination, suffering, and surveillance. Faith was no longer personal. It was visible. Enforced. Measured by pain.

Over time, the mountain absorbed it all—miracles and doubt, devotion and control, soldiers and antennas, pilgrims and tourists. As Bogotá burned during El Bogotazo, Monserrate watched. As cable cars replaced penance, it remained. As faith fragmented, it did not disappear.

Written in luminous, restrained prose, Monserrate — Faith, Fear, and the Mountain That Watches tells the story of how a city has always defined itself by what stands above it. This is narrative history at its most intimate—where geography becomes memory, and belief leaves marks not only on stone, but on bodies.

For readers of Erik Larson, Wade Davis, Rebecca Solnit, and Robert Macfarlane, this book offers a haunting exploration of how sacred spaces endure—even when faith itself changes.

This is Book Two in the series Bogotá: A City Written in Stone.

Each volume stands alone. Together, they tell the story of a city built on memory.