Pasto, Colombia

Pasto (Colombia), officially San Juan de Pasto, is the capital of the department of Nariño, located in southern Colombia. The city is located in the "Atriz Valley", on the Andes cordillera, at the foot of the Galeras volcano, at an altitude of 8,290 feet (2,527 m) above sea level. The city has a population of approximately 500,000 inhabitants.

History

Pasto was founded in 1537 by the Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar. In 1539 another Spanish conquistador Lorenzo de Aldana moved the city to its current location, and established it under the name "San Juan de Pasto". Pasto is a reference to the name of the indigenous people who inhabited the region at the arrival of the conquerors, the Pastos. However, the Atriz Valley was inhabited by the Quillacingas. A major contributor to the economy and expansion of Pasto was a man of Italian origin named Guido Bucheli.

It has been an administrative, cultural and religious center of the region since colonial times. Because of this, the city is known as the theological city of Colombia. During the Independence Wars against Spain Pasto was a royalist city, unlike the rest of the country. Partly due to this political stance, and because of its geographical location, after independence Pasto remained isolated for a long time from the rest of the Colombia.