Other sights in Puerto Rico
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Corporación Piñones Se Integra
The Corporación Piñones Se Integra is a community based nonprofit organization that is involved in improving the facilities in Puerto Rico’s poorer barrios, particularly Loíza. Concurrently, they are working hard to keep the island’s traditional Afro-Caribbean culture alive. Headquartered in the Centro Cultural Ecoturístico de Piñones situated to the right of Rte 187 immediately after you cross the bridge at Boca de Cangrejos, the organization promotes some of Puerto Rico’s best bomba y plena performances at its on-site Café El Búho at 9pm on the second and last Friday of each month. You can also arrange traditional dancing and percussion lessons here (phone …
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Puerta de Tierra
Less than 2 miles in length and only one-quarter of a mile broad, this district occupies the lowland, filling the rest of the area that was colonial San Juan. Puerta de Tierra takes its name from its position as the 'gateway of land' leading up to the walls of Old San Juan, which was the favored route of land attack by waves of English and Dutch invaders. For centuries, Puerta de Tierra was a slum much like La Perla, although far less picturesque.
It was a place where free blacks and multiracial people lived, excluded from the protection of the walled city where the Spaniards and criollos (islanders of European decent) postured like European gentry and maneuvered for poli…
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Museum
Contrary to popular opinion, Rincón’s history didn’t begin in 1968 with the World Surfing Championships. Proof lies in this tiny museum, which harbors articles salvaged from shipwrecks and testimonies on the area’s social history. Like a lot of the municipal museums on the island, the Centro Cultural is open irregularly and is dependent on the state of the current municipal budget and volunteerism. Enquire first at the Tourist Information Center; staff there should be able to enlighten you as to current opening times and/or the possibility of a private viewing.
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Casa Alcaldía
Facing Plaza Las Delicias on the south side of the plaza, Ponce’s current city hall started life in the 1840s as a general assembly house but soon became a jail. The last public hanging on the island happened in its courtyard, where you can see galleries that were formerly cells. The building has been Ponce’s civic center for most of the 20th century; its balcony has seen speeches by four US presidents – Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt and George HW Bush. The waggish head of Carnaval, El Rey Momo, also makes his pronouncements from here.
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Balneario Boquerón
Rated as one of the best public beaches in Puerto Rico (along with Luquillo), the Balneario Boquerón is a mile-long arc of sand backed by coconut palms and ample grassy lawns. Facilities include showers, changing rooms, toilets and picnic tables. The waters here are calm making it popular with Frisbee-throwing families who come down at weekends. To get there turn left (heading towards town) off Hwy 101 at the Boquerón Beach Hotel and proceed along a small spur road for a ¼-mile.
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Museo de Casals
On Plaza de San José is the Museo de Casals. A native of Spain’s proud but repressed province of Catalonia, world-famous cellist Pablo Casals moved to his mother’s homeland of Puerto Rico in 1956 to protest the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco in Spain. He quickly established the respected Festival Casals for classical music, which became a principal force in the subsequent flowering of the arts on the island.
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Casa Morales House
Highlighting the eclecticism and historical diversity of San Germán’s architecture this Victorian-era house was built soon after the American occupation in 1898. With its gables, porches and roof turrets, it is redolent of a Queen Anne–style structure from the plush neighborhood of a US mainland city. It also exemplifies how quickly American aesthetics infiltrated the island. It is a private home and not open to the public.
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Cuartel
Built in 1854 as a military barracks, the cuartel is a three-story edifice with large gates on two ends, ample balconies, a series of arches and a protected central courtyard that served as a plaza and covers a reservoir. It was the last and largest building constructed by the Spaniards in the New World. Facilities included officer quarters, warehouses, kitchens, dining rooms, prison cells and stables.
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House
Situated on the main drag, this house - Casa Perichi is a 1920s estate that’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986. Its eclectic architectural style featuring wraparound balconies and decorative wood trim has been called ‘Puerto Rican ornamental artisan.’ It’s not currently open for public viewing.
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Museum
Housed in the 18th-century Casa de los Contrafuertes (House of Buttresses) on the Plaza de San José, the compact museum displays masks, sculptures, musical instruments, documents and prints that highlight Puerto Rico’s connections to West Africa. One exhibit recreates living conditions in a slave ship.
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Museum
If you’ve got a half hour to kill in the town of Cabo Rojo and have more than a passing interest in Puerto Rican history, this small museum can enlighten you on local painting, indigenous Taíno culture and the life and times of various 19th-century liberal luminaries such as native-born Ramón Emeterio Betances.
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Casa Acosta Y Flores House
Built in a crisscross of styles, this house, dating from 1917, exhibits elements of criollo, Victorian and art-nouveau architecture. Painted in cream and white with intricately decorated iron railing it resembles a beautifully crafted wedding cake. The house is a private residence, but can be admired from the outside.
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Park
For centuries now, the Río Camuy has been imposing its will on the soft karstic underground limestone to create this incredible system of caves, the world’s third-largest. This park spreads over an area about 10 miles long and has 17 entrances in the area between the towns of Hatillo, Camuy and Lares.
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Museum
Another eclectic house, built in 1903, this building is home to the local art and history museum. Rooms are dedicated to different subjects, such as Taíno artifacts, religious curios like an old confessional booth, and colonial furniture.
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Mausoleo Familia Muñoz Rivera
Just south of the plaza is a family tomb that holds the remains of Muñoz Rivera, his famous son Luis Muñoz Marín and their wives. Photographic displays at the tomb evoke the funeral of Luis Muñoz Marín.
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Art Gallery
Poised against the outside wall of the city is La Princesa which now houses an art gallery with welcome air-conditioning and frequently changing shows by first-rate island artists.
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Museum
The small museum displays artifacts from shipwrecks and relays anecdotes from the area’s maritime history. The principal reason to come here, however, is for the view.
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