The focus of the town is the Plaza Mayor, which at 14,000 square meters is the largest square in Colombia and believed to be the largest entirely cobbled square in South America. The town's most famous son is
Antonio Ricaurte (1797–1814), a captain in
Simon Bolivar's army fighting for independence, and who died in a famous act of self-sacrifice at
San Mateo in what is now Venezuela. The house in which he was born, on the Plazuela de San Agustín, was acquired by Colombia's Air Force in 1977 and turned into a military museum. Villa de Leyva has also been home to two other well-known figures in Colombian history.
Antonio Nariño, best known for translating
The Rights of Man into Spanish and a leading advocate for Colombian independence, lived the last few years of his life and died in Villa de Leyva. Luis Alberto Acuña (1904 – 1993), one of the most important Colombian artists of the 20th century, also spent his final years in the town. The houses of both men are now museums containing their personal properties, and in the case of Acuña, a selection of his works, including two murals on the walls of the internal patio. The House of the First Congress, where the First Congress of the United Provinces of Nueva Granada met on October 4, 1812, is located on the north corner of the main plaza. It is currently the site of the municipal council. A few miles further west is a
Muisca astronomy observatory, made of phallic stones, colloquially named
El Infiernito ("little hell" in Spanish), as the Spanish
conquistadors were horrified by the stones and proclaimed that the Muisca would be banished to hell for their obscene representations. To the north-east of Villa de Leyva, the land rises to cloud-forest and includes the national park of
Iguaque, and a group of seven
waterfalls collectively named
La Periquera, from the town centre. Villa de Leyva was named a
Pueblo Patrimonio (heritage town) of Colombia in 2010. It was among 11 municipalities nationwide that were selected to be part of the
Red Turística de Pueblos Patrimonio original cohort. == Paleontology ==