Honda () is a town and municipality in the Tolima department of

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

. The population of the municipality was 24,693 as of the census 2018. Along with Líbano, Honda is the seat of the

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, prov ...

of Líbano-Honda. The main industries of Honda are tourism, fishing, and cattle-ranching.

Toponymy (name origin)

Honda takes its name from the Ondaimas, the indigenous people that inhabited the banks of the

Magdalena River The Magdalena River (, ; less commonly ) is the main river of Colombia, flowing northward about through the western half of the country. It takes its name from the biblical figure Mary Magdalene. It is navigable through much of its lower reaches, ...

and the region where the city lies today. Honda is called "the City of Bridges" with more than 40 of them on the rivers Magdalena, Gualí, Guarinó, and Quebrada Seca. It is also called the "City of Peace" as it escaped most of the violence of the 1950s.

History

Honda was founded on August 24, 1539 by Francisco Nuñez Pedroso. The "golden age" of the city was between 1850 and 1910 when the Magdalena river constituted the only means of transportation between the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

coast and the inland city of Bogotá. The city was the main river port of the country and all the imported goods and articles arrived in

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

through the port of Honda. Because of its historical importance, Honda was named a ''Pueblo Patrimonio'' (heritage town) of Colombia in 2010. As of March 2021, it is the only municipality in the Middle Magdalena Valley region that has been awarded this distinction.

Climate

References

Populated places on the Magdalena River Port cities in Colombia Municipalities of Tolima Department Villages in Colombia {{Colombia-geo-stub