San Juan is the oldest U.S.-held European capital in the Americas
San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital and largest municipality, was founded by Spaniards in 1521 as Ciudad de Puerto Rico—second oldest European capital in the Americas after Santo Domingo (1496) and the oldest under U.S. sovereignty. Old San Juan's forts and streets headline a salsa capital and major seaport.
When the Spanish arrived, the area formed the border between two Taíno chiefdoms, Guaynabo under the cacique Mabo and Haimanio under Yuisa, also called Loaíza. Juan Ponce de León's first settlement of 1508, Caparra, took its name from a Roman town in Cáceres, birthplace of governor Nicolás de Ovando, and lies in today's Guaynabo. A year later the colonists moved to the harbour they called Puerto Rico, rich port. The diocese founded there on 8 August 1511 is the second oldest in the Americas, and in 1521 the town was formally named Ciudad de Puerto Rico de San Juan Bautista.
Then the names swapped. Because both the island and the city were called by both labels, by 1746 Puerto Rico had come to mean the whole island, and maps briefly showed the capital as Puerto Rico de Puerto Rico. As the first stop for ships from Spain and a guard post for gold and silver convoys, the city was ringed with forts and became a target.
Attackers kept coming. El Morro's guns drove off Francis Drake in 1595, but George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, landed in 1598 and held the city for months until disease and exhaustion forced him out. In 1625 a Dutch force under Boudewijn Hendricksz sacked the town and set La Fortaleza ablaze on 21 October, but El Morro held, and 200 men led by Captains Amézqueta and Botello chased the invaders back to their ships. Sir Ralph Abercromby, fresh from taking Trinidad, besieged the city in 1797 and failed.
In May 1898 American warships under Rear Admiral William T. Sampson bombarded San Juan, and after the Treaty of Paris the Spanish commander Ángel Rivero Méndez handed its keys to the US Army. Old San Juan's walls and forts joined the UNESCO list in 1983, and the metro area now holds about three-quarters of Puerto Ricans.
Source: San Juan, Puerto Rico
