Palaces to visit Dominican Republic

Located at the end of the Plaza España esplanade, the austere façade of the palace overlooks the River Ozama. It was built between 1511 and 1514 on the model of a similar building in Salamanca, Spain. It was the first fortified palace built by the Spanish colonizers, and the only known residence of a member of the Columbus family. To take charge of this monumental construction, an architect, whose identity has been forgotten, came specially from Spain. Some 1,500 Amerindians were forced to build the edifice from coral rock quarried from the banks of the Ozama River, using only hammer, chisel and saw. The building's style is predominantly Gothic and Arabic, with a few Renaissance features, such as the arcades. A technical feat, the Alcazar's 55 rooms (only 22 still exist today) and 72 doors and windows were built without a single nail. During his great sacking in 1586, the English pirate Francis Drake is suspected of having stolen most of the palace's valuables. The building was subsequently abandoned over the centuries and soon fell into ruin. There is evidence that the site, once an emblem of Spanish power, was used to confine cattle in the ^18th century. It wasn't until 1870 that it was declared a national monument to preserve its ruins. The Dominican government ordered its renovation between 1955 and 1957.

The Palacio Consistorial was built in the 19th century to house the town hall. It is located near the Parque Nacional, a place where the local population lives and passes through. The Palace is today the cultural center of the city with a museum (free) which recalls the history of Santiago through photographs dating from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Unfortunately it is not very well furnished, nevertheless you will observe an exhibition on the costumes of the famous carnival. From the floor, beautiful sight on a part of the city.

This six-storey palace, built on Trujillo's orders on a hill overlooking the city in the 1930s, is a massive concrete building with no particular charm. Its construction was entrusted to the engineer Henry Gazón. The dictator never occupied the place, but he had the walls decorated with frescos of the famous Spanish painter José Vela Zanetti (1913-1999). The palace was transformed into a hotel in the 1970s and then abandoned in the late 1990s, before renovations were undertaken.

The building, which houses the headquarters of the San Cristóbal Town Hall, was inaugurated in 1937. Easily recognizable by the small tower - on the top of which stands a clock - flanked by a one-story building, it was built entirely of reinforced concrete, in an architectural style of baroque-victorian inspiration, typical of the beginning of the last century. Because of its design and its representation in Dominican architecture, it has been declared "Cultural Heritage of the Dominican Republic". A construction that deserves a quick look.