Garcia Marquez ashes to be exhibited in Cartagena

Garcia Marquez arrived in Cartagena in 1948 and found a job as a journalist with a local newspaper.

The ashes of the Colombian Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez will be taken to the Caribbean city of Cartagena in December.

They will be permanently exhibited at a colonial-era cloister in Cartagena's historic centre.

Garcia Marquez set several of his works in the city, including Love in the Time of Cholera.

He died in Mexico in April 2014, where he lived for many years with his family.

The decision by his wife Mercedes Barcha and his two sons to bring his cremated remains to Cartagena was welcomed by his Colombian friends and many others in the country.

Garcia Marquez arrived in the city in 1948 and found a job as a journalist with a local newspaper, El Universal. To the end of his life, he kept a holiday home in Cartagena, which he visited frequently.

The celebrated author of One Hundred Years of Solitude also established a foundation there to train Latin American journalists, the Fundacion Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano.

Its director, Jaime Abello, said the decision to bring his remains to the city made sense.

"Cartagena is where Garcia Marquez built his home, the only one he ever built," he said. "Many members of his family live there and it's where his parents are buried."

"Garcia Marquez and his wife never stopped being Colombian, despite living many years abroad," said Mr Abello.