The faithful reconstruction of the Aracataca house in which García Márquez was born in 1927 and lived until he was eight. The original mud-and-cane building was demolished in the 1950s; the 2010 reconstruction follows the original room-by-room layout, with period furniture and family photographs in each room. The garden contains the chestnut tree of One Hundred Years of Solitude and the workshop where Colonel Nicolás Márquez — the grandfather who raised the writer — made the gold fish that recur throughout the novel.
For anyone who has read the book, the house is genuinely affecting: the layout of rooms, the heat, the lassitude of the staff, all match the prose. Free entry, modest opening hours; allow an hour. The guides speak basic English and Spanish.