Comuna 13 tour: how to go with resident guides

The escalators are a commute first

Six flights of covered escalators climb a hillside of brick houses in San Javier, and most of the people riding them are going home. More than 12,000 residents use the system daily. That is why the district administration overhauled every section in 2026, replacing 350 steps and servicing the gear motors, the first full maintenance since the escalators opened. ^{7, 4}

The same hillside takes an extraordinary number of visitors too, just over half of them from abroad. ⁴

Medellín sits at 1,479 meters, and Comuna 13 climbs the hillside above the valley floor. The escalators do the climbing. Your job is to pick a guide, a language and a time, and to know what each one costs before you arrive. ⁸

How much does a Comuna 13 graffiti tour cost?

Three operators publish something on their own sites. Two publish a price, one publishes only a phone number.

Published walking-tour prices sit between COP 35,000 and COP 50,000 a person, about USD 10.58 to USD 15.12. Zippy Tour asks COP 35,000 for the Spanish departure and COP 50,000 for the English one. Tours Comuna 13 lists COP 40,000 for 2026. Paisa Tours prints its inclusions and its departure times, then sends buyers to WhatsApp for a figure. ^{1, 2, 7, 3}

Set against a whole trip, this is a small line. A tour and the ride out land near the price of two restaurant meals in the month-by-month Colombia budget, which is worth knowing before you book the priciest option you find on a booking platform.

Who guides you, and what the city trained them to do

The training behind these tours is public record, and a large share of it belongs to this hillside. The Alcaldía de Medellín runs the courses with SENA, the national training service, and publishes the counts each time a group qualifies. ^{9, 5}

• 50 guides from Comuna 13 and San Javier certified as tecnólogos in tour guiding in September 2021, which lets them work formally anywhere in Colombia. ⁹
• 184 residents trained by March 2023 as professional guides, tourist information staff and destination hosts. ⁵
• 64 of the 267 professional guides certified citywide in the 2021 to 2022 course came from Comuna 13, about 24 percent of them. ⁵
• 19 members of the neighborhood's Contadoras de Historias collective certified in tourist information in 2022, the whole graduating group. ⁵

Behind the counts are working careers. Cristina Zapata, one of the 50 certified in 2021, had guided visitors informally for seven years before the certificate arrived. The same city count put about 615 people in the district's tourism economy that year, among them guides, operators, vendors and storytellers, with more than 100,000 visitors already logged. ⁹

Casa Kolacho runs its tours from inside the neighborhood. The organization describes itself as a cultural movement grown out of Comuna 13's hip-hop scene, teaching dance, painting and music alongside its guided tours. Its site publishes no price, so ask. ¹⁰

What does the tour actually show?

The walk is the product, and the operators list what is in it. Paisa Tours publishes the fullest itinerary of the three: about three hours, on foot, through the parts of the district where the art and the escalators are. ⁷

• A local guide, and Colombian tourist insurance included in the price. ⁷
• The neighborhood's largest section of graffiti, plus galleries run by local artists and the Neon House. ⁷
• A street dance show and a viewpoint over the valley. ⁷
• All six flights of the escalators, and the streets of 20 de Julio and Independencia I and II. ⁷
• Ice cream. ⁷

The walk has a history of its own. Tours Comuna 13 dates the Graffiti Tour to 2008 and 2009, started by local artists known as Perrograf and Jeihhco, and puts the opening of the escalators in December 2011, in place of a concrete staircase up the slope. ²

How do you get to San Javier station?

San Javier, on Line B, is the Metro stop for Comuna 13. A visitor riding without a personalized Cívica card pays the Al Portador fare of COP 4,400, which is COP 580 more than a frequent rider pays with a card. Settle the meeting point with your operator when you book. ⁶

One point of confusion worth clearing up. The cable cars you can see from the platform are Línea J, Medellín's second Metrocable, which opened on 3 March 2008 and runs from San Javier up to Juan XXIII and La Aurora. That line serves other parts of the same district, and it is separate from the escalators on the tour. For the rest of the Metro and the comunas, the Medellín city guide covers the system end to end. ¹¹

Where does the money actually go?

No operator, and no city agency, publishes how a tour fee splits between the guide, the collective and the company. Anyone quoting you a percentage got it somewhere other than a published source.

What is on the record is the shape of the economy around the walk: nearly 2 million visitors through the corridor in 2025, about 615 people working in the district's tourism sector as of 2021, and hundreds of residents certified since then. The fee is real income in a neighborhood that trained for the work. The split is a question for the person selling you the ticket. ^{4, 9, 5}

• Is the guide from Comuna 13, and which collective or company receives the fee?
• Is the price fixed, or pay what you want with a suggested figure? ¹
• What does the ticket cover: the dance show, the insurance, the ice cream? ⁷
• How many people walk in a group, and in which language?

Plan the afternoon in five moves

Pick the departure first, then the ride. Two of the three operators run at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., so the day builds itself around one of those. ^{1, 7}

1. 01

   Choose the time and the language

   Zippy Tour runs Monday to Saturday at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., in Spanish at COP 35,000 or English at COP 50,000. Paisa Tours keeps the same three departure times and quotes over WhatsApp. ^{1, 7}

2. 02

   Ride Line B to San Javier

   COP 4,400 at the Al Portador fare, or COP 3,800 on a collective bus. Buy the return at the same time if you prefer to keep the change for the walk. ^{6, 12}

3. 03

   Confirm the price at the meeting point

   Fixed price or free price, group size, language, and what the ticket includes. Zippy's two pages describe its English tour both ways, so this is the moment to settle it. ¹

4. 04

   Walk the six flights

   Two and a half to three hours, mostly outdoors and mostly uphill until the escalators take over. The corridor is busy: 5,429 visitors a day on the 2025 average, alongside the 12,000 residents who use it to get home. ^{1, 4}

5. 05

   Carry small cash, and confirm the meeting point

   The return ride and the ice cream at the end of the walk both want small bills, not a card. Settle the meeting point with your operator when you book, so the walk ends where you expect it to. ^{6, 7}

What does the afternoon add to a Colombia budget?

One tour and two Metro rides come to COP 48,800, about USD 14.76. That is the whole outing for one person at the middle price, with food and tips still to come. The English departure at Zippy Tour would push the same day to COP 58,800. ^{2, 6, 1, 3}

Weighed against a whole trip, it is a rounding error. A Comuna 13 afternoon costs less than one intercity bus leg on the one-month Colombia route, and Medellín sits on that route as the working stop for anyone pricing a remote-work month abroad. More planning pages for the country live on the Colombia hub.