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Santo Domingo, population 2,061,200,
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 Americas, 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 Fray 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."
Inside the colonial city, the first citadel
(Fortaleza Ozama), the first hospital
(hospital de San Nicolás de Bari), the first
cathedral (catedral de Santo Domingo), 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 the English buccaneer
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.
The name Santo Domingo was originally Santo
Domingo de Guzmán. Under the First
Constitution that name legally fell under
disuse in 1878, and was not restored again
until 1966. |
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© 2005 City of Miami
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