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Picture this as you read.
You are walking down a rough cobblestone street. There is a light breeze running over your skin, cooling you down on the way. Behind you, the cobblestones continue up a sloping hill and you can see the top of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist rising above the surrounding rooftops. In front of you is the Capilla del Cristo – Capilla de Cristo – which shows its age of 240 years, but remains in good condition. Beyond the chapel, you can see on both sides of it, San Juan Bay shimmering blue in the sunlight. A huge cruise ship passes from right to left, as it prepares to park at the nearby dock. To your left is a small museum dedicated to preserving the island’s cultural art, and to your right is a small park that echoes with the laughter of schoolchildren feeding the hundreds of pigeons that live there.
Taking a few steps forward, you approach the small wall that prevents unlucky victims from falling to their death. You look down and realize that it is not actually a low wall as you initially thought, but is actually the top of a fifty-foot-high defensive barricade that was built almost four centuries ago. Looking down around your feet, you notice that the cobblestones don’t look exactly the same as the cobblestones in the continental United States. They are not brick red, but dyed blue and cast in slag iron. They were used as ballast in the ships that crossed from Spain to San Juan, to keep them balanced in the waves of the sea. After reaching port, they were thrown off the ships and used to build cobbled streets. On which particular ship these cobblestones arrived, you do not know. But it doesn’t take much imagination to conceive of the possibility that they arrived on the same ship that carried Juan Ponce de León, or possibly even Christopher Columbus.
As you turn around and walk back in the other direction, you pass tall four- and five-story buildings with intricate facades and blue and yellow paint schemes. If you travel two blocks north, you’ll pass a park dedicated to the wild cats of Old San Juan, and if you look carefully, you’ll see several of the beautiful cats lounging in a corner, intently watching the humans around them. The park has monuments to cats, with their necks stretched out in curiosity, and a huge tree dominates the center, casting a beautiful shadow over the entire area. Sit here and relax, or go on your way. Immediately to your right as St. John’s Cathedral, and while you can’t tell right away from the outside, you quickly realize this is the second oldest cathedral in the Western Hemisphere and is reaching its 500th anniversary in 2021. A To your left, recently celebrating its 350th anniversary, is Puerto Rico’s first convent, El Convento. Now one of the best hotels in Old San Juan, it hosts socialites from around the world and also has a charming restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a variety of drinks in between. Turning left here, you walk down another aged cobblestone street and through a wall. Standing on the path that crosses the bottom of the street, you look up and read the Latin inscription above the door you passed: “Benedictus Qui Venit In Nomine Domini” – “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” “
This gate used to be the main entrance to the city and the docks were just below. Sailors knelt at the door as they disembarked and offered a prayer of thanks to God for allowing them safe passage. Walking away from the gate, you walk down the path to your left and look at the full extent of the defensive walls you noticed earlier, in the chapel. Pockmarks riddle the walls, evidence of centuries of failed invasions. You can almost hear the musket and cannon fire from the top of the ramparts as the Spanish defenders battled Francis Drake and a host of other English and Dutch invaders.
Old San Juan is a must-see for any history buff, whether they prefer European or American tales. Everything comes together in Puerto Rico. Isla del Encanto is the birthplace of European culture in the Americas, discovered by Columbus in 1493. Old San Juan is the second oldest European city in the Western Hemisphere and is approaching its 500th anniversary in 2012. Although it may may not be as old as Dresden or Brighton or Rome or a host of other European cities, you can be sure that you will always be blessed with a climate only seen in a tropical paradise, plus you are guaranteed that the city will never be full of condominiums or high-rise hotels. . Of all the ancient cities in the world, Old San Juan may be the best to maintain its identity and not get lost in the wave of tourism that reaches the coast 24 hours a day.