Introducing León

Refined, intense and politically progressive, León would be mildly offended if you referred to it as 'Nicaragua's second city.' Formally known as Santiago de León de los Caballeros, the country's original capital was founded by Francisco Fernández de Córdoba on June 15, 1524 - almost two months after arch-rival Granada, which has never let León forget it, and 242 years before the (ahem) quaint little fishing village of Managua was handed the prize.

León remains what many frustrated isitors are looking for in the capital: cultural center with mind-blowing churches, thriving universities, fabulous art collections and historic sites. Its thick-walled colonial architecture has yet to receive the makeover Granada is currently enjoying (there are still bullet holes leftover from the 1970s), but this is actually the more authentically Spanish city, having been burned to the ground only a fraction of the times of its oft-sacked southern adversary.

Originally located on the slopes of Volcán Momotombo, León committed some of the Spanish conquest's cruelest excesses; even other conquistadors suggested that León's punishment was divine retribution. When the mighty volcano reduced León to rubble in 1610, the city was moved, saint by saint, here, next to the existing indigenous capital of Subtiava.

The reprisals did not end there. Eager to win the civil war with Granada, which had, since independence, been contesting the colonial capital's continuing leadership role, in 1853 León invited US mercenary William Walker to the fight. After the Tennessean declared himself president (and Nicaragua a US slave state), he was executed; the nation's capital was moved to Managua, and Granada's conservatives ran the country for the next three decades.

Finally, in 1956, Anastasio Somoza García (the original dictator) was assassinated in León by Rigoberto López, a poet in waiter's clothing. The ruling family never forgot, and when the revolution came, their wrath fell on this city in a hail of bullets and bombs whose scars have still not been erased.

León has remained proudly Liberal, even a bit aloof, through it all, a Sandinista stronghold and political power player that has never once doubted its grand destiny. To hear what this sort of self-confidence sounds like set to a tune, ask any troupe of mariachis to play the city's theme song, 'Viva León Jodido' (the word jodido has a PG rating in Nicaragua), then climb on top of Central America's largest cathedral and contemplate anew this most volcanic of views.