Plaza de Armas”

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Plaza de Armas, Old San Juan, PRA few streets to the north­east of “El Par­que de las Palo­mas” there’s an ele­gant square known as “Plaza de Armas”.  Plaza de Armas’ orig­i­nal name was la “Plaza May­or”.  It was built by the Span­ish gov­ern­ment at the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry to resem­ble its much larg­er coun­ter­part in the city of Madrid.

Plaza de Armas has under­gone var­i­ous mod­i­fi­ca­tions dur­ing the last two cen­turies.  The orig­i­nal square was paved with a com­bi­na­tion of tile brought from the Canary Islands and black riv­er stone col­lect­ed local­ly.  In 1851, Span­ish gov­er­nor Pezuela added a “salón paseo” or strolling area that was much in vogue at the time in Euro­pean cir­cles.  The new plaza end­ed up being sev­er­al feet above street lev­el and was sar­cas­ti­cal­ly bap­tized by the san­juaneros as “Pezuela’s Pantheon”.

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By the time the US invad­ed the Island in 1898, the square had once again been brought down to street lev­el, and a small con­crete wall with iron­work dec­o­ra­tions was built around the perime­ter.  The Plaza de Armas that we see today was restored in 1992, when the city cel­e­brat­ed the quin­cen­ten­ni­al of the dis­cov­ery of America.

Orlando Mergal buys all his photo equipment at B&H

Dis­clo­sure of Mate­r­i­al Con­nec­tion: Some of the links in this post are “affil­i­ate links.” This means that if you click on a link and pur­chase an item, I will receive an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion. Regard­less, I only rec­om­mend prod­ucts or ser­vices that I use per­son­al­ly and believe will add val­ue to my read­ers. I am dis­clos­ing this in accor­dance with the Fed­er­al Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Advertising.”

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