This article examines the role of cartography in patrimonial representation. It does so through a case analysis of Colombia’s ‘Coffee Cultural Landscape’, inscribed on the World Heritage List (UNESCO) since 2011. An inscription comprising four departments; and fifty-one municipalities, located in the Cordillera de los Andes. When investigating the antecedents and effects of this demarcation, complex exchanges are found between practices and representations, implicit to the processes and different protagonists of heritagization. Focusing on the act of mapping, both the interpretative models of the space that were in dispute during the preparation of the inscription are analyzed, as well as some local reinterpretations registered, after the same, by means of an ethnographic approach in one of the municipalities recognized as heritage.