SANTO
DOMINGO - DOMINICAN REPUBLIC |
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Santo Domingo, population 2,061,200 (2003),
is the capital of the Dominican Republic. The city is located on the
Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River. It is the oldest
continuously inhabited European settlement in the Western Hemisphere, and
was the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World.
The city was founded between the years 1496 and 1498, as Santo Domingo de
Guzmán, by Bartolomeo Columbus (Bartolomé Colón), brother of Christopher
Columbus, on the eastern bank of the Ozama River, and extended to the
western bank in 1502 by the governor Friar Nicolás de Ovando. The city
served as a model for other colonial cities of the New World. In 1508,
Ferdinand II of Aragon gave the city the coat of arms with the emblem of "First
City of the Indies." |
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Inside the colonial city, the
first citadel (Fortaleza Ozama), the first hospital (hospital de San Nicolás
de Bari), the first cathedral (Primada de América), and the first monastery
(Monasterio de San Francisco) in the Western Hemisphere were built.
In 1538, construction began on the oldest university in the New World. It
was named Santo Tomás de Aquino, in honor of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and still
survives as the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD).
A tomb in the cathedral was reputed to be the final resting place of
Christopher Columbus, but the remains (the authenticity of which is
disputed, with Spain also claiming to have a set of Columbus's bones) were
moved to the Faro A Colón (Columbus Lighthouse) in 1990.
The city was sacked by Sir Francis Drake in 1586, and was almost completely
destroyed by a hurricane in 1930. It was rebuilt and renamed Ciudad
Trujillo, after dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, but the original name was
restored almost immediately after his assassination in 1961. |
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