in full Capital District of Santafé de Bogotá
City (pop., 1999: 6,276,428), capital of Colombia.
It lies on a plateau east of the Andes Mountains . European settlement began in 1538 when Spanish conquistadores overran Bacatá, the main seat of the Chibcha Indians; the name was soon corrupted to Bogotá. It became the capital of the Viceroyalty of Simón Bolívar took the city in 1819. It became the capital of the confederation of {{link=Gran Colombia">Gran Colombia ; when that entity was dissolved in 1830, it remained the capital but of New Granada and later the Republic of Colombia. Today Bogotá is an industrial, commercial, educational, and cultural centre.