Colombia's Coffee Region

Also known as the coffee triangle, this area of Colombia is famous for growing and producing the majority of Colombian coffee. Coffee was first grown commercially in Colombia in Salazar de las Palmas and over the twentieth century grew to become Colombia's primary export. Farmers in the area have developed techniques for growing, harvesting and processing of grain, and all done "grain by grain", and have retained this form of processing industry despite new techniques of mass agricultural industrialization. Eighteen urban settlements across six sites within the coffee axis and extending southwards into the Valle del Cauca department were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2011 as the Coffee Cultural Landscape. These sites are representative of the entire coffee axis, preserving multiple different forms of traditional coffee growing, in addition to the culture of the region and the locations of several unique festivals.