Armenia, the capital of the Department of Quindío in the Andino region of Colombia, is a relatively small, slow-paced city with a certain quirky, ramshackle charm. The city makes an excellent base for exploring a territory that UNESCO declared a World Heritage Site in 2011: the Coffee Culture Landscape of Colombia. This region is famed for its coffee and banana plantations, its quaint terracotta-roofed farm houses, and its picturesque mountainous landscapes dotted with an impressive array of cultural attractions as well as an abundance of fascinating plant and animal life. The city itself is of course a coffee lover’s paradise with some lovely coffee shops and a number of theme parks and estates designed to educate visitors about coffee culture. Other popular tourist highlights include an excellent museum housing an impressive collection of artifacts from the pre-columbian Quimbaya civilization and some wonderful botanical gardens.