Medellín

Medellín needs 3 days: the Museo de Antioquia, with the world's largest collection of Fernando Botero works, on one, Parque Arví, an Andean forest nature reserve reached via the Metrocable over the city's hillsides, on another, and touring Comuna 13, a former epicenter of violence now transformed with urban art and public escalators, on the third. December-March is best, though the mild climate holds year-round. It's mid-priced for Colombia. Nicknamed the 'city of eternal spring' for its stable climate at 1,500 meters altitude, it went from being one of the world's most dangerous cities in the 1990s to an international case study in urban renewal, with a public transit system -metro and urban cable cars- that integrated the most underserved neighborhoods with the rest of the city.