PUERTO RICO
municipio de San Juan

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• lt: San Chuanas • lv: Sanhuana
• el: Σαν Χουάν
• bg, mk, sr: Сан Хуан • be, ru, uk: Сан-Хуан

San Juan is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it has a population of about 342,300. Puerto Rico's capital is the second oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, after Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, and is the oldest European-established city under United States sovereignty. Several historical buildings are located in the historic district of Old San Juan; these historic sites were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. Today, San Juan is Puerto Rico's most important seaport and is one of the island's most notable financial, cultural, and tourism centres.

The Taíno people were the original inhabitants of the area before the arrival in 1493 of the Europeans to the island, which the explorers then named San Juan Bautista. In 1508, Juan Ponce de León founded the original settlement which he called Caparra. A year later, the settlement was moved to a site then called Puerto Rico, Spanish for "rich port" or "good port", after its similar geographical features to the town of Puerto Rico de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. The local Catholic diocese, the second oldest in the Americas and the oldest in the United States, was founded in the newly built settlement in 1511. In 1521, the newer settlement was given its formal name: Ciudad de Puerto Rico de San Juan Bautista. The ambiguous use of San Juan Bautista and Puerto Rico for both the city and the island in time led to a reversal in practical use by most inhabitants: by 1746 the name for the city (Puerto Rico) had become that of the entire island, leading to the city being identified as Puerto Rico de Puerto Rico on maps of the era, while the city today is officially known as San Juan. San Juan, as a settlement of the Spanish Empire, was used by merchant and military ships traveling from Spain as the first stopover in the Americas. Because of its prominence in the Caribbean, a network of fortifications was built to protect the transports of gold and silver from the New World to Europe. Because of the rich cargoes, San Juan became a target of the foreign powers of the time. When the Spanish–American War ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1898, Spain had to relinquish all claim of sovereignty over the island of Puerto Rico and other territories to the United States.

The Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de San Juan Bautista [left, no. 4704: background] is the Catholic cathedral for the archdiocese of San Juan de Puerto Rico. It is one of the oldest buildings in Old San Juan, the oldest cathedral in the United States, the second-oldest existing cathedral in the Americas, and the third cathedral constructed in the Americas. Although the cathedral of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is an older church building, and the Garðar cathedral ruins in Greenland were built and served as a cathedral much earlier, the cathedral of San Juan holds the distinction of being the oldest existing purpose-built cathedral church in the Americas. The original cathedral was constructed from wood in 1521. It was destroyed by a hurricane and the current church construction began in 1535, being practically completed in 1802. In 1905 the upper portion of the façade was added. The cathedral contains the tomb of the Spanish explorer and settlement founder Juan Ponce de León. The Cathedral is also the National Shrine of Our Lady of Divine Providence, patron saint of Puerto Rico.

The statue of Juan Ponce de León [foreground] was erected in the Plaza de San José next to the cathedral in 1882. The statue was made from cannons captured from the British in 1797 following the Battle of San Juan, a failed attack on Puerto Rico. A copy was erected in 1923 in St. Augustine, Florida, in the United States. In 2022, the statue was vandalized and knocked down by protestors one day before the visit of the King of Spain, Felipe VI, who visited Puerto Rico to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the foundation of San Juan. However, the statue was repaired and reinstalled less than 24 hours after its toppling.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan,_Puerto_Rico; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_San_Juan,_Puerto_Rico, https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catedral_de_San_Juan_Bautista_(San_Juan,_Puerto_Rico); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Juan_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n]