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Santo Domingo
The oldest European city in the Americas, capital of the Dominican Republic
Santo Domingo claims a distinction no other city in the hemisphere can match: it is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas, the place where Spanish colonization of the New World began. More than three and a half million people now live in the metropolitan area of the Dominican Republic's capital, a Caribbean city sprawling along the southern coast where the Ozama River meets the sea. Its colonial core preserves the first cathedral, the first university, and the first fortress the Europeans built in the Americas.
The city sits on the southern coast of Hispaniola at the mouth of the Ozama River, on low, gently rolling limestone terrain fringed by the Caribbean Sea. The river provided the sheltered anchorage that drew the first settlement to its banks. The walled Colonial Zone, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, occupies the original grid laid out at the river's mouth, its narrow streets lined with sixteenth-century stone buildings. The tropical climate brings warmth year round and a hurricane season that has periodically struck the city, while modern Santo Domingo has spread far inland and along the coast in dense, sprawling districts.
Bartholomew Columbus founded the settlement in 1496, and it was soon moved to the west bank of the Ozama, becoming the base from which Spain launched the conquest of the Americas. From here Cortés, Ponce de León, and others set out. The first cathedral, hospital, and university in the hemisphere rose within its walls. As the empire's center of gravity shifted to Mexico and Peru, the city faded, enduring earthquakes, pirate raids, and shifting colonial rule. Today Santo Domingo is the bustling capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic, its ancient stones surrounded by a thoroughly modern metropolis.