
The National University of Colombia was founded in 1867, It's Bogata site is renowned as the one the first Latin-American examples of a planned 'campus'. Designed by Fritz Karsen and Leopold Rother, refugees from Nazi Germany, construction began in 1935, with the campus forming an elliptical plan, suggestive of the shape of an owl, signifying wisdom. Today, 17 buildings on the campus have been designated national monuments. Other sites include a campus at Medellin, also constructed in the late 1930s.