The Colombian municipality of Soledad belongs to the department of Atlantico and due to its great growth the city is in a conurbation with Barranquilla. Its origin dates back to 1598, when the area was used to breed animals, but as time went by the area was settled by people who lived as free neighbors. In 1640 was processed its foundation as a town and from 1813 the city starts to use the name as it's called nowadays. In 1860 the city was a battlefield between liberals and traditionalists in a bloody civil war. The main tourist attractions are the Museo Aeronautico Fundacion, with works of international artists and a great collection of science and technology, the Museo Bolivariano Casa Bolivar where the liberator lived some time before his death and also the San Antonio de Padua church, which rise magnificent, despite the more than 4 centuries of antiquity, a jewel of the history that you can not miss. The most representative dish of Soledad is the butifarra, a saussage of Catalan origin, that here is served with agave and lemon; other plates to underline are sancocho de bocachico, the pescado en cabrito, arepas de huevo (a type of bread made with eggs) and the mojarra frita. The most celebrated festivals of the municipality are the Fiestas Patronales de San Antonio de Padua, that pursue to preserve also the cultural heritage of the city with the cumbia, the typical dances or the famous ten-line stanzas -literary expressions- which are created in the region; you can go to the Festival de Merecumbe, a style that mixes merengue and cumbia musics and was created on the 50s by Francisco Pacho Galan, and finally the Festival de la Cumbia y Cumbiamba celebrated in December that looks for protecting this genres actually. Soledad is a territory that keeps important episodes of history and accumulates them as well as the city does with the music born in its land.