1500 steps to Cerro de Monserrate, Bogotá

You will have no regrets after climbing the 1500 stairs leading to Cerro de Monserrate. This mountain in Bogotá dominates the city center of Colombia’s capital. It rises to 3,152 metres (10,341 ft) above the sea level, where there is a 17th century church with a shrine, devoted to El Señor Caído (“The Fallen Lord”).Before the Spanish conquest, the Bogotá savanna was inhabited by the Muisca. The indigenous people, who had a thorough understanding of astronomy, called Monserrate quijicha caca; “grandmother’s foot”. At the solstice of June, the Sun, represented in their religion by the solar god Sué, rises exactly from behind Monserrate, as seen from Bolívar Square. The Spanish conquistadors in the early colonial period replaced the Muisca temples by catholic buildings. The first primitive cathedral of Bogotá was constructed on the northeastern corner of Bolívar Square in 1539, a year after the foundation of the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada.

In the 1620s, the Cofradia de la Vera Cruz(“Brotherhood of Vera Cruz”) began using the Monserrate’s hill top for religious celebrations. As time passed, many devoted residents of Bogotá began participating in the climb to the hill top. In 1650, four gentlemen met with the Archbishop as well as Juan de Borja, the head of the Tribunal of Santafe de Bogotá, in order to secure permission to build a small religious retreat on the top of Monserrate. The founders decided to establish the hermitage retreat in the name of Monserrat’s Morena Virgin. Her sanctuary was located in Catalonia, near Barcelona, giving the mountain the name Monserrate.

All downtown Bogotá, south Bogotá and some sections of the north of the city are visible facing west which makes it a popular destination to watch the sunset over the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monserrate