The History of Old San Juan

A Spanish garrison town on an islet, fortified for three and a half centuries because whoever held this harbour held the sea lane home. Every date below is one the National Park Service or the Governor's own office publishes. The walking tours that cover this ground are the historical tours of Old San Juan listings.

Before the walls, 1493 to 1521

Columbus reached Puerto Rico in 1493. The settlement that became San Juan was established on the mainland first. It moved onto the islet in the following generation, and that move explains everything after it. The islet sits at the mouth of a deep natural harbour on the windward edge of the Caribbean. A fleet that held it commanded the route back to Spain.

The first fortification, 1533 to 1540

Construction of La Fortaleza was authorised by King Charles I as protection against raids, and it began in 1533 and finished on 25 May 1540. It was the first fortification built to defend the city. It was also the first of a series that came to include El Morro, San Cristóbal and Fortín de San Gerónimo. Casa Blanca, put up in 1525, is older still, but it was a house rather than a defence.

El Morro begins, 1539

Work on Castillo San Felipe del Morro started in 1539 on the headland at the harbour mouth, and it did not stop for two and a half centuries. The Italian military engineers Bautista Antonelli and Juan Bautista Antonelli reshaped it across the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. What they produced is the layered, angled work that survives, six levels deep against the Atlantic.

Attack from the land, and San Cristóbal after 1634

El Morro answered the sea. The English and Dutch attacks of the sixteen-hundreds taught a plainer lesson: the city could be taken from behind. Castillo San Cristóbal dates from 1634 as the reply. It took more than 150 years to complete. It spread across 27 acres of outworks, tunnels and moats, which makes it the largest fortress the Spanish built in the Americas. Its outlying sentry post east of El Morro is the Garita del Diablo.

Closing the ring, 1678

The city wall was completed in 1678: three miles of masonry standing fifty feet high, running from El Morro round to San Cristóbal and enclosing the whole islet town. Fort San Juan de la Cruz, El Cañuelo, had gone up across the water in 1606 to cross fire with El Morro over the harbour entrance. From this point San Juan was a closed military city with gates that shut at night.

The last Spanish century, 1783 to 1846

The final major campaign at El Morro came in the late seventeen-hundreds, under Field Marshal Alexander O'Reilly and his chief engineer, Colonel Thomas O'Daly. Their work brought the fort to roughly the form it holds today, by about 1790. La Fortaleza was thoroughly remodelled in 1846, converting a military building into an administrative one as the garrison's purpose shifted from defence to government.

1898, and what changed

The United States took control of Puerto Rico in 1898, following the Spanish-American War. The forts stayed in military hands for another half century under a different flag, then passed to the National Park Service. That is why they survive as complete works rather than as quarried stone. The city, meanwhile, had long since spilled out past its own walls onto the mainland.

From garrison to World Heritage, 1949 to 1983

The forts passed out of military use and into the National Park Service as San Juan National Historic Site. In 1983 the property was designated a World Heritage Site, covering La Fortaleza together with the fortifications. Approximately 170 governors have occupied the mansion since the sixteenth century. It remains a working residence rather than a museum, which is why its tours run on a working government's diary.

The dates in one place