CS Knowledge Base

The position of Amalfi between the last edges of the Andes to its north and the slopes to the Caribbean region made it a human corridor of ancient migrations. Native Americans were present in what is today modern Colombia since about 15 thousand years ago. In the region of the municipality of Amalfi there are archaeological traces dated 9,000 years ago related to the cultures of the Yamesíes, Guamocoes, and Tahamíes.^[5] Although those people are considered extinct, their descendants survived in the mestizo population of the region; ancient traditions, names, beliefs, and myths like the Jaguar cult, petroglyphs, and words also survive and are the objects of current anthropological and archaeological studies.

The territory of the modern municipality of Amalfi was not of much interest for the Spaniards during the three centuries of colonial rule (16th to 18th centuries) as it was in neighboring regions such as Segovia, Remedios, and Yolombó, attracted by their rich gold mines.

In 1580 the Spanish conqueror of Antioquia, Don Gaspar de Rodas, made an excursion to the region following the Porce and Nechi rivers, but he did not establish any Spanish settlements.^[5] He established the town of Zaragoza in 1581 while searching for a connection with the Magdalena River.

During the 18th century, groups of traders from Cartagena de Indias, Santa Marta, and Mompox settled on the Lower Cauca of Antioquia to search for gold and founded the first town in the Amalfi territory, known then as Cancán and today as the Corregimiento de Portachuelo. A Catholic church was built by the groups of traders, some of whom lived there under the administration of Zaragoza, but it was abandoned a few years later.^[5]

After the Independence of Antioquia, General Julián Trujillo, acting governor, tried to recover the old foundation under the name of San Martín town, but it did not attract enough settlers and was abandoned in 1888.

During the Antioquian Colonization, families from Rionegro, La Ceja and other towns of the Eastern Antioquia, Medellín, Copacabana, Yarumal, Santa Rosa de Osos and Santa Fe de Antioquia, migrated to the region in search of gold and other opportunities. Among these first Antioquian settlers were also foreigners, especially German Jews, Arabs from the Middle East, Chinese laborers from the Antioquian railway constructions, and Nordic Europeans from Norway.

In 1838 Reverend Father José Santamaría y Zola, a Spanish Catholic priest from Málaga, Spain who was living in Copacabana, led an expedition of families looking for new opportunities around the gold mines. They established a town at the Riachón River Valley that was concluded in 1843. Before the town was named Amalfi, the settlers renamed it multiple times, calling it Riachón, Santa Bárbara, Cueva Santa and Nueva Población.

Bishop Juan de la Cruz Gómez Plata made a visit to Italy, and he became enamoured with the Italian town of Amalfi of Salerno. Although it was a town at the side of the Tyrrhenian Sea, vastly different from the mountain town in the Antioquian Andes, Bishop Gómez Plata thought that the blue skies of the Italian town resembled those of the Antioquian one. For this reason, he decided to give that Italian name to the new settlement of gold miners to be called Amalfi-Antioquia.

A Swedish migrant, engineer and geographer, Carlos Segismundo de Greiff (1793–1870), made his contribution with the design of the streets for the new town with professor Antonio Aguilar. The design was a master plan that is preserved and admired for its symmetrical distribution in the Riachón Valley. Carlos Segismundo de Greiff is the first ancestor in Colombia of the Greiff family that generated remarkable descendants such as poet León de Greiff (1895–1976), musician and journalist Otto de Greiff (1903–1995), politician Gustavo de Greiff Restrepo (1929–), lawyer Mónica de Greiff (1956–) and historian Jorge Arias de Greiff (1922–).