Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ashes laid to rest in home country Colombia

Late novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ashes have been laid to rest in Cartagena, Colombia on Sunday (22 May). He died in 2014 at the age of 87 in Mexico, where he had lived for years.

His ashes were buried in Cartagena because many of his family members were also entombed there.

"Cartagena is the city where the Garcia Marquez family is based. It is where my grandparents are buried," said Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, one of the author's two sons, to the French news agency AFP as reported by BBC, adding: "It seemed natural to us that his ashes should be there too."

Marquez, affectionately called Gabo or Gabito, is best known for his magic realist novels like One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Love In The Time Of Cholera and Chronicle Of A Death Foretold.

On Sunday, his relatives, friends and local dignitaries assembled for a ceremony at Cartagena University, where his son, Rodrigo Garcia Barcha, unveiled a sculptor of his father in the centre of the covered passage of the university.

"It's a day of joy mixed with sorrow," Marquez's sister Aida Rosa Garcia Marquez said, adding: "But there is more joy than sorrow because to see a brother get to where Gabito reached can only bring joy."

Garcia Marquez was born in 1927 in Aracataca near Colombia's northern Caribbean coast. He first started his career as a journalist in Cartagena and later moved to Mexico.

Marquez is considered to be one of the most significant authors of the 20th century and one of the best in the Spanish language. In 1972 he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and in 1982 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.