Pablo Escobar’s once-opulent Colombian vacation home was demolished this week, 21 years after the drug lord’s death.
The 20-room mansion, complete with a private runway for Escobar’s cocaine planes, was one of the main tourist draws at a theme park that now covers much of the drug dealer’s former estate of Hacienda Napoles. It was also a derelict reminder of the drug dealer’s rapid rise and fall.
a statement released Wednesday, theme park managers said they demolished the semi-ruined mansion before the whole thing collapsed on its own, potentially pinning tourists under its rubble.
Apparently, the former architect of Colombia’s drug world was rather careless about the architecture of his own home.
“The structure lacked iron beams. Weight points were not well distributed and there was a lack of tie beams [to hold walls together],” reads a release from the park.”These pathologies were later complemented by abandonment, rain, the actions of looters and the inevitable passing of time.”
A herd of 50 hippos, the offspring of four animals bought in the 1980s for Escobar’s personal zoo, still roam the area. There’s also a former bullring and a replica of one of the planes that Escobar used to smuggle cocaine to the United States.