Despite its beauty, the haunted Hotel del Salto in Colombia has been the site of numerous suicides, according to various newspapers.
Tequendama Falls Hotel overlooking Tequendama Falls.
The deluxe Hotel del Salto in San Antonio, Tequendama, is one of the most famous places for visitors to Bogota. It was originally built in 1923 as a private villa for architect Carlos Arturo Tapias.
The building featured beautiful French design and tall windowpanes. It was built to represent the elegance and sophistication of the elite class of the 1920s. “The Mansion of Tequendama Falls,” as it was known, was built during the administration of Pedro Nel Ospina (1922-1926).
Tequendama Falls Hotel Before Renovations.
By 1928, an addition had been built, and the structure had opened as a hotel for wealthy tourists visiting the Tequendama Falls area. This venture was a huge success, as the hotel remained open for the next 60 years.
The building was to be reconstructed into an eighteen-story hotel beginning in July 1950. Despite this, the Hotel Del Salto remained open until the original structure became too damaged to operate from the increasingly polluted Bogota River.
Tourists gradually lost interest in the area, and the hotel closed in the early 1990s, leaving it in ruins ever since.
Located opposite the waterfall and on the edge of the cliff, it provided a fantastic view for its guests.
Unfortunately, it was also the site of many suicides. This led others to believe that the hotel was haunted.
According to local legend, the first Muisca Indians used to jump from Tequendama Falls (to avoid arrest by Spanish conquerors throughout the conquest of South America). After that, they would mutate into hawks and fly to their freedom. This mythical tale attracted the broken-hearted, who jumped to their deaths from the cliffs of the hotel while viewing the falls.
The hotel shut down in the early 90s, believed to be linked to contaminated river water.
Following Spanish colonization, the falls drew Muisca people who chose the powerfully poetic end of falling to their deaths over a life of servitude.
The EFFPN and UCINS formed a joint rehabilitation effort for the hotel’s complex structure in 2011. Their goal was to turn the Hotel Del Salto into a museum that would serve as a national symbol of cultural heritage and environmental recovery.
The estate reopened as a museum in 2013, with the first exhibit, “Caverns, ecosystems of the subterranean world,” under the new name “Tequendama Falls Museum of Biodiversity and Culture.”