Three Floors, Three Bars, One Walk-In Door
Ranked 11th on The World's 50 Best Bars in 2025, the bar on Calle del Colegio takes no reservations and runs every cocktail at $45,000 COP. The floor you pick decides the night.
The Ajonjolí lands on a small round table in the courtyard: whisky, sesame paste, a cordial pulled from orange and carrot. It reads like a farm inventory and drinks like a proper old-fashioned cousin — nutty, sweet at the edges, structured underneath. The room around it is a 19th-century mansion in El Centro, walls lit warm, ceiling fans turning slow, and a bar team working through the ground-floor menu with the calm of people who have made these drinks several thousand times.
Alquímico runs on a specific idea. Three floors, three menus, one price. The ground floor leans on producers from Colombian farming communities. The middle floor holds the classics of the house. The rooftop is farm-to-bar, pulling from an estate the bar itself runs. Every cocktail is $45,000 COP; the first two floors will split it into a half portion for $28,000 COP if you want to move through more of the list. The World's 50 Best Bars 2022 to 2025 ranked it in the top eleven four years running — tenth, ninth, eighth and 11th — and the room knows it.
The building holds three separate bars and one door policy — no reservations, arrive early or wait for a stool.
Editorial Deep
The programme is the reason to come and the reason to come back. Ground-floor Ajonjolí is the drink to open on: whisky, sesame, an orange-and-carrot cordial that tastes worked-out rather than clever, tied to producers the bar names on the menu. Move up one flight for the Clásicos Alquimistas and you get the house's own canon — the Inquisición and the Basilico Punch drink like the room they were designed for, bigger and more direct. The rooftop menu, Xuan among them, works chamomile and gin from the bar's own estate in Filandia into something lighter and more floral than the floors below.
The mansion does most of the work. High ceilings, painted plaster walls, timber shutters open onto the courtyard, and the light is kept low and candle-warm on the lower floors. The ground floor reads as a proper cocktail bar — tables in the courtyard, a bar along one wall, room to hear the person opposite you. The first floor is tighter and darker, banquette seating around the edges. The rooftop is another building entirely: open air, a DJ booth, the volume climbing every hour after ten.
The room fills with the Cartagena traveller class — well-dressed thirty-somethings from Bogotá and Medellín, a heavy expat contingent, honeymooners, bachelorette groups. Downstairs stays civil most nights. The rooftop is a club by eleven, and a loud one — the common complaint about the volume is fair, and it is the point rather than a flaw.
Every cocktail is $45,000 COP, and any tip is voluntary, which the server is required to ask about rather than add. For a bar sitting inside the world top eleven, in a restored mansion in the historic centre, that is honest pricing rather than trophy pricing — the same drink in a comparable London or New York room runs materially higher. The half-portion option at $28,000 COP is the value move if you want to sample rather than settle in.
This is the best cocktail bar in Cartagena and one of the best in the region, and the flat pricing plus the three-floor structure means you can build any kind of night inside one door. Arrive at seven, take the Ajonjolí in the courtyard, move up for a Basilico Punch, finish on the roof with a Xuan as the DJ takes hold. The limit is the room's own success: after ten on a weekend, the queue for the door and the volume on the roof make it a bad choice for a quiet drink or a first date that needs conversation. Come early for the bar, come late for the party, and know before you leave the hotel which one you want.
Order this
Drink this.
Ajonjolí on the ground floor; Xuan on the rooftop
“The best cocktail bar in Cartagena and a genuine world-class programme. Walk in early for drinks, late for the roof.”
Alquímico earns its 2025 World's 50 Best ranking — the ground-floor menu tied to Colombian producers is the strongest of the three, the rooftop is a party rather than a bar after ten, and the flat $45,000 COP pricing plus half portions makes tasting easy. No reservations, so arrive before 8 PM on weekends if you want to sit and drink rather than queue and stand.
The Verdict
