As a new Netflix series thrusts Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece back into the spotlight, these are the real-life places that inspired the writer’s magical realism.

In a small town fringed by banana trees in northern Colombia, a solitary yellow butterfly flutters through the languid, muggy air. Vallenato folk music floats from a shop window, as bicycles as glide down the sun-soaked streets. And the sides of buildings, storefronts and a weathered door with peeling paint all carry the same name: Macondo.

Book lovers might recognise Macondo as the fictional town in One Hundred Years of Solitude, written by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. Considered one of the 20th Century’s best-known novels and a masterpiece of magical realism, the book has sold 50 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages since it was published in 1967. Now, it’s the subject of a popular new Netflix series.

While the fictional village of Macondo was recreated on a set in central Colombia for the series, residents here in García Márquez’s childhood hometown of Aracataca – and even García Márquez himself – credit the town with inspiring his work. But this small town, with its chorus of insects and slew of Macondo signs, is one of several places across northern Colombia’s Magdalena and La Guajira departments that shaped the epic tale of the Buendía family.