Santo Domingo
— — the first European city the Americas remember.
Not only on a wall.
“Santo Domingo holds the first of many things in the European Americas: the first cathedral, the first university, the first paved street. The Zona Colonial is a small grid of coral-limestone buildings on a bluff above the Ozama River, laid out at the end of the 15th century and inscribed by UNESCO in 1990. Calle Las Damas, the street the Spanish governors' wives walked, still runs past the Alcázar de Colón toward the river. The shadows in the arcades are cool. The light coming off the river is not.
Santo Domingo, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Santo Domingo is the capital of the Dominican Republic, on the south coast of the island of Hispaniola at the mouth of the Ozama River. It was founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus on the east bank and moved to the west bank after a hurricane in 1502, making it the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded settlement in the Americas. The Colonial City, known locally as the Zona Colonial, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. The greater metropolitan area is home to about 3.5 million people and is the political and economic centre of the country.
The Zona Colonial is built largely from coral limestone quarried locally, the same warm cream stone that gives the old quarter its consistent light. The Catedral Primada de América, begun in 1512 and completed in 1540, is the oldest cathedral in the Americas. The Alcázar de Colón, the residence of Diego Columbus from 1511, sits at the head of Calle Las Damas, the first paved street laid out in the European Americas. The Fortaleza Ozama, completed in 1508, still guards the river mouth from its limestone bluff and is the oldest standing European-built military fortress in the hemisphere.
The Zona Colonial covers roughly one square kilometre and is best walked, beginning at the Parque Colón in front of the cathedral and working east toward the river along Calle Las Damas. Most museums open from around 9 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, with a slower midday for the worst of the Caribbean sun. The dry season runs December through April and is the most comfortable time to be on foot. Las Américas International Airport, about 30 kilometres east of the city, is the main international gateway.