Laureles, the Best Place to Live in Medellín and Learn Spanish in Colombia

Almost every foreigner who arrives in Medellín lands in El Poblado first. It is comfortable, it is full of people who speak English, and for that exact reason it is the worst possible place to be if you came here to learn Spanish. Laureles sits on the other side of the city and works the other way round: fewer tourists, more neighborhood life, and streets where Spanish is not optional.

Where Laureles is, and why it feels different

Laureles lies in the west of Medellín and, together with the Estadio sector, makes up comuna 11. The first thing anyone notices on arrival is that the ground is flat. The second is that nearly every street has mature trees. By the third day they discover that the layout is not a grid but a system of circular and transversal streets that confuses even taxi drivers.

That design has a date. The neighborhood was laid out in 1943 under Pedro Nel Gómez, with the collaboration of Austrian architect Karl Brunner, following the European garden city idea: wide avenues, roundabouts and parks instead of the usual Spanish grid. Eighty years later, that same layout is what makes the place so pleasant to walk.

In October 2023, Time Out put Laureles at the top of its annual list of the coolest neighborhoods in the world. The news travelled fast and brought the predictable consequences: more short-term rentals, more specialty coffee shops and a lot more people asking where it is.

A neighborhood you can walk

You feel the difference with El Poblado in your legs. Over there, every trip involves climbing a hill. Here you can walk to almost everything. It sounds like a small thing and it changes your whole routine: you shop on foot, you go to the gym on foot, and you can go out at night without depending on a ride-hailing app.

• Flat terrain and wide sidewalks across most of the neighborhood.
• Supermarkets, bakeries, banks and pharmacies within a fifteen-minute walk.
• Estadio, Suramericana and Floresta metro stations on line B.
• Bike lanes and EnCicla stations, the city's public bicycle system.
• The Atanasio Girardot sports complex, with pools, tracks and courts open to the public.

The advantage travel guides never mention

If you are learning Spanish, the important fact about Laureles is not the Time Out ranking. It is that English has not yet become the service language here. At the bakery, the fruit stand, the gym reception and in the taxi, the conversation starts in Spanish and stays in Spanish.

That daily friction is exactly what moves you forward. In a tourist area you can spend three months handling everything in English and leave with the level you arrived with. In Laureles, ordering lunch is already a practical lesson, and the correction arrives on its own when someone does not understand you the first time.

Laureles compared with El Poblado

What an ordinary day looks like

Mornings usually start at a bakery with coffee and pandebono. At midday, the menú del día handles lunch for very little money: soup, a side dish, protein, rice, salad and fresh juice. It also happens to be the best listening exercise available, because the waiter rattles off the options at full speed and does not repeat them twice.

In the afternoon, two parks work as the neighborhood's living room, the Primer and Segundo Parque de Laureles, always full of people, dogs and outdoor tables. At night, Avenida 70 concentrates the bars and the music, while Avenida 33 and its surroundings hold much of the restaurant scene. And when there is a match at the Atanasio Girardot, the whole neighborhood knows about it.

For digital nomads

Laureles has filled up with cafés with decent wifi and coworking spaces over the past few years, and fibre reaches most buildings without trouble. The time zone helps: Colombia sits at UTC-5 and never changes its clocks, so meetings with North America fall in normal working hours and European calls land in the early afternoon.

On prices, check the market at the time you actually travel. Rents in Laureles remain below El Poblado, but they have climbed a good deal since 2023, and the gap between a yearly contract and a furnished weekly rental is enormous. Always ask whether building fees and utilities are included.

Studying Spanish in Laureles

Our Medellín campus is in the Laureles-Estadio sector, on carrera 76, for all the reasons above. The idea is simple: class in the morning, neighborhood in the afternoon, so that whatever you practise in the classroom gets used on the street the same day.

Every student starts with a placement test, because the fastest way to waste a month is to sit in the wrong group. Classes stay small and corrections land in the moment, while they are still attached to something you were trying to say.

The neighborhood you live in decides how much Spanish you will actually speak. Everything else is detail.

Before you book a place to stay

If you already know you are coming to Medellín, choose the neighborhood before the apartment. Tell us your dates and your level and we will let you know which schedules are open and which part of Laureles puts you closest to the school.