Palace of the InquisitionPalacio de la Inquisición

Facing Cartagena’s Plaza de Bolivar, the Palace of the Inquisition is an 18th-c. Baroque mansion later associated with the Holy Office tribunal established here in 1610. Its carved stone portal and wooden balconies frame rooms where inquisitors investigated alleged heresy, sorcery, and other forms of dissent under Spanish rule. Today the building operates as a museum, using trial records, colonial-era artifacts, and instruments of punishment to confront the mechanics of fear and authority—and the uneasy language of justice that followed.