Cochabamba
— the city the spring forgot to leave.
Not only on a wall.
“A wide valley city at 2,558 metres, ringed by the Tunari range and watched over by the Cristo de la Concordia on San Pedro hill. The mercados spill out around La Cancha, salteñas come out of the ovens by mid-morning, and the air stays mild almost every month. Locals call it the City of Eternal Spring, and they mean it.
Cochabamba, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cochabamba sits in a fertile Andean valley in central Bolivia at 2,558 metres elevation, with a metropolitan population of around 1.2 million. The Spanish founded the settlement in 1571 as Villa de Oropesa; it took its current name, from the Quechua qhocha pampa meaning lake plain, in the nineteenth century. The city is the capital of Cochabamba Department and the country's fourth largest, ringed by the Tunari mountain range to the north and the Rocha River along its southern edge.
The altitude is high enough to read as mountain air but low enough that newcomers acclimate easily, a thousand metres below La Paz. Days run 18-25 degrees Celsius across most of the year, the basis for the City of Eternal Spring nickname. The wet season runs December through March; the dry months from May through September bring clear skies that hold the Tunari range sharp against the southern horizon. Mornings smell of woodsmoke and bread from the panaderias around the Plaza 14 de Septiembre.
The Cristo de la Concordia on Cerro San Pedro stands 34.2 metres tall, edging out Rio's Christ the Redeemer; a cable car climbs to the base from the eastern edge of the city. La Cancha, one of South America's largest open-air markets, runs daily across roughly seven blocks south of the center. The international airport at Jorge Wilstermann (CBB) connects to La Paz, Santa Cruz, and regional capitals. The cuisine is famous nationally for silpancho, salteñas, and pique macho.