Muzo, the emerald capital of the world

A name bigger than the village

Muzo is nestled in the foothills of the Cordillera Oriental, at an altitude of about 800 meters, in the Río Minero basin. After the cold of the altiplano, the climate here is warm and humid, with dense vegetation and hillsides where cacao, coffee, and sugarcane grow. For this is a surprising reality: despite its name, the municipality’s economy relies heavily on agriculture and livestock farming. Emeralds define its identity, its legend, and its great fortunes; yet daily life is also earned in the fields.

The town itself is modest: sloping streets, brick and sheet-metal facades, blue motorcycle taxis climbing toward the hamlets, a covered market, and simple hotels. Nothing here resembles the image one has of a world capital of anything. It is precisely this contrast that makes the place fascinating: stones that end up as fine jewelry in Paris or Geneva begin their lives here, between tropical downpours.

Five Centuries Centered on a Stone

The name comes from the Muzo people, one of the most warlike in the region, who resisted the conquistadors for some twenty years before the town was founded in 1559 under the name Villa de la Santísima Trinidad de los Muzos. The Spanish began colonial mining operations there; in fact, tunnels dug beneath the village itself remain from that era. Then came the boom of the 1980s, when thousands of fortune seekers flooded into the region, followed by a dark period: the “Green War,” two decades of violence between emerald-mining clans that plagued the entire western part of Boyacá until peace was restored in the 1990s.

Muzo tells this story today without mincing words, and pairs it with an older legend: that of Fura and Tena, the two Muisca lovers turned into rocky peaks, whose tears—Fura’s, in particular—are said to have seeped into the earth and crystallized there into green stones. The two peaks that guard the valley bear their names, as does the Fura, an 11,000-carat rough emerald discovered in 1999. Even the local good-luck charm has a gem-like sheen: the Morpho cypris, a large iridescent blue butterfly found in the forests of the Río Minero, is the village’s emblem, and spotting one is said to bring good luck.

Everything happens around the kiosk

Life in Muzo revolves around its main square. The Nuestra Señora de La Naval church overlooks it; the^16th-century bell tower—the last remnant of the original church—stands guard nearby; and in the center stands the famous kiosko, the covered pavilion around which all the town’s activity revolves: the outdoor cafes, the chess games, the endless discussions, and the emerald trade itself. It is there, on tables where the magnifying glass and the “quilatera”—the carat scale—never leave the surface, that the lots change hands, wrapped in sheets of white paper.

Life here follows a weekly rhythm. Muzo really comes alive on Sundays, market day, when miners and guaqueros come down from the veredas and the town square turns into an open-air marketplace. On Saturdays, Coscuez—the region’s other major mining town—holds its market: many merchants visit both in succession. And there’s a code we learned while we were there: a cloth draped over the shoulder is the distinctive sign of an emerald merchant. Walk through Muzo with this cloth on your shoulder, and people will approach you to offer stones. It’s a silent language, passed down through decades of trade, that no guidebook mentions.

The statues in the town extend the square: a miner pushing his mine cart at a street corner, a guaquera with a sieve, and an old guaquero with a shovel near the kiosko. Muzo honors those who seek the stone, not those who carry it.

Storefronts, but the market is elsewhere

Around the square, the town has several emerald shops, often open late, sometimes attached to a cutting workshop where locally sourced stones are faceted. But they see little foot traffic: they’re mainly used for display and storage. Tourism remains a niche activity in 2026, with just a few travelers—alone or in couples—coming to visit a nearby mine, stay in a simple hotel, and then leave. The real market—where large quantities and the most beautiful stones are traded—takes place in Bogotá, in the dealers’ district. Muzo mines and pre-sorts the stones; the capital sells them.

What's New: Live Auctions

A recent trend is shaking up this pattern: shops in Muzo have started selling their emeralds through live auctions on TikTok. The storefront becomes a stage: lighting, a phone on a tripod, stones presented one by one to the camera, and buyers bidding from Bogotá, Miami, or Dubai. For a small town where almost no one ever steps inside the shops, this is a complete reversal: customers no longer come to Muzo; instead, Muzo reaches out to the world.

Some might see this as a gimmick. We see it instead as the logical continuation of a local tradition: here, we adapt. The emerald trade has survived the conquistadors, the bonanzas, and the “green war”; it will certainly survive the algorithm.

To go or not to go

Muzo is easy to visit during the day, and the welcome there is simple and straightforward. You just need to know what you’re looking for: there are no theatrical museum exhibits or marked trails, and the large commercial mines aren’t open to the public. The journey itself is an adventure, which we’ve described in detail in our travel journal on the road from Bogotá to Muzo. And for anyone transporting stones or silver, the rules are the same as throughout the region: discretion and a local guide.