Fort “San Cristóbal”

fuerte-san-cristo­bal

fort-san-cristobal-01-600px

A few steps up Norza­garay street, to the north­east of Plaza Colón, is the remark­able Fort San Cristóbal.

Fort San Cristóbal has two entrances, one on Ponce de León Ave., which is most­ly for cars and tour bus­es, and one on Norza­garay, which is main­ly for pedes­tri­ans.  I sug­gest using the entrance on Norzagaray.

But before we start up the hill, take a minute to visu­al­ize how mas­sive the orig­i­nal Fort San Cristóbal actu­al­ly was.  The por­tion of the fort that you see today is rough­ly half the size of the orig­i­nal, and it’s still the largest Span­ish fort in the New World.

In 1793, when it was final­ly com­plet­ed, Fort San Cristóbal cov­ered over 27 acres and extend­ed all the way down to San Juan Bay.  At its high­est point, Fort San Cristóbal ris­es over 150 above sea level.

18th Cen­tu­ry San Juan had no tall build­ings and none of the build­ings that are present­ly in front of Fort San Cristóbal exist­ed either.  So a sen­tinel could eas­i­ly see all the way to the edge of the islet towards the east and across the city to Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro towards the west.

Don't miss our 5-minute video about Fort San Cristóbal in our vlog section.

In 1897, city offi­cials decid­ed to demol­ish San­ti­a­go Gate, along with a sub­stan­tial part of Fort San Cristóbal to pro­mote urban devel­op­ment on the east­ern side of islet.  The demol­ished por­tion of the fort includ­ed half of the Trinidad Coun­ter­guard, the San­ti­a­go Rav­elin, the San­ti­a­go Bas­tion, San­ti­a­go Gate, and a con­sid­er­able por­tion of the dry moat.

Rav­elins were tri­an­gu­lar shaped forts –also called lunettes– that were built in front of bas­tions to serve as out­er defens­es. “El Aban­i­co“, which is the out­er­most of Fort San Cristóbal’s rav­elins, and was beau­ti­ful­ly restored by the Nation­al Park Ser­vice is cov­ered under a sep­a­rate tab.

Fort San Cristóbal also had a glacis, sim­i­lar to the bar­ren piece of land in front of Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro.  This would have been where the Island’s Capi­tol build­ing stands today, along with the Puer­to Rico Olympic Com­mit­tee, the Casa España, the Athenaeum, the Trea­sury Depart­ment and sev­er­al oth­er small­er buildings.

After walk­ing up a small stretch of Norza­garay street, you’ll enter Fort San Cristóbal through the west­ern ramp lead­ing to the main gate.  Look care­ful­ly over the mas­sive wood­en doors and you’ll see a shell-shaped sym­bol with an arc over the top.  This was the sym­bol of Saint James, the patron saint of the Span­ish army.

As you enter the fort, the first thing on your left will be the guard­house.  In colo­nial times, the guards at this post would con­trol access to the fort and enforce mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline.  Today, they’ll charge you a $3 entrance fee and hand out infor­ma­tion about the fort and oth­er near­by attrac­tions.  They’re also a lot friendlier!

Fort San Cristobal Main Square, Old san Juan, Puerto Rico

Cen­tral square at Fort San Cristóbal

Imme­di­ate­ly after the guard­house you’ll see the main plaza, were Span­ish sol­diers con­duct­ed drills and pun­ished the unruly.  But before you walk towards the plaza, take a few steps back and walk up the ramp imme­di­ate­ly to the left of the main entrance.  This ramp leads to the North Bat­tery, which was added by the Spaniards in 1897 to defend the north side of the fort from sea attacks.  Ordoñez canons at this bat­tery, sim­i­lar to the one you see today, fired the first shots of the Span­ish-Amer­i­can War on the morn­ing of May 12th, 1898.

The North Bat­tery also offers an excel­lent view of the north­ern side of the city wall, all the way to Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro at the west­ern tip of the islet.

Once you walk back down to the fort entrance turn left and enter the main square.  In colo­nial times, Span­ish sol­diers con­duct­ed all sorts of mil­i­tary exer­cis­es in this square and pun­ished the unruly in ways that today would be con­sid­ered cru­el and unusu­al.  Insub­or­di­nate sol­diers would be forced to walk between two rows of mus­ke­teers who would hit them repeat­ed­ly with the butt of their mus­kets.  If the sol­dier fell before com­plet­ing his pun­ish­ment, he would be tak­en to the infir­mary, cured and returned to the square for the remain­der of his punishment.

Soldier's quarters, Fort San Cristóbal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

This is what the sol­dier’s quar­ters at Fort San Cristóbal would have looked like in colo­nial times.

At the far end of the main square are the Troop Quar­ters, a two sto­ry build­ing fin­ished in 1733 that had four bar­rack rooms on each lev­el.  One of the rooms has been restored to resem­ble the typ­i­cal liv­ing con­di­tions of an 18th cen­tu­ry sol­dier.  Anoth­er holds a scale mod­el of Fort San Cristóbal as it looked in 1793.  The remain­der of the first floor holds the mil­i­tary archive where stu­dents and researchers can obtain in-depth infor­ma­tion by appoint­ment only.  The cen­ter stair­way leads to the sec­ond floor, which in turn leads to a cir­cu­lar stair­case that goes up to “El Caballero de San Miguel”.

Across the main plaza we find the offi­cers quar­ters and two round well­heads that sit direct­ly over the fort’s mas­sive cis­terns.  Here you will find sev­er­al exhibits about the fort’s his­to­ry includ­ing repli­ca canons, weapons and life size fig­ures of Span­ish sol­diers in uniform.

Like many oth­er things at Fort San Cristóbal, the main square served mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es.  It actu­al­ly sits over five huge cis­terns that held up to 716,000 gal­lons of rain­wa­ter; enough to sup­port the fort for an entire year.

The islet of San Juan has no rivers and in colo­nial times it had no aque­ducts either.  Span­ish engi­neers worked around this lim­i­ta­tion by con­struct­ing huge cis­terns under the main squares of both forts.  Rain­wa­ter was col­lect­ed through chan­nels lead­ing to the forts cis­terns.  This also meant that clean­li­ness was of para­mount impor­tance.  Ani­mals were not allowed inside the forts under any circumstance.

In fact, mod­ern day Puer­to Rico would prob­a­bly be an Eng­lish speak­ing island if the Queen’s army hadn’t ignored this fact.  In 1598, George Clif­ford, the Earl of Cum­ber­land attacked San Juan and cap­tured El Mor­ro.  How­ev­er, his fatal mis­take was to bring his hors­es into the fort.  Six weeks lat­er, his troops aban­doned the city after falling prey to an out­break of dysen­tery.  Noth­ing like a lit­tle con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed water to dri­ve the ene­my out of town.

On the north side of the square we find a row of vault­ed rooms called case­mates. The guns in these rooms point­ed straight out to sea and their mis­sion was to shoot at the hulls and decks of ene­my ships.  Their enclosed nature made them prac­ti­cal­ly indestructible.

The last two rooms behind the guard­house didn’t hold guns at all.  The last one housed the latrines and the one before it housed the kitchen.

"Caballero de San Miguel", Fort San Cristóbal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Caballero de San Miguel”, Fort San Cristóbal

Right next to the Troops Quar­ter theirs a large ramp that leads to “El Caballero de San Miguel” or cav­a­lier.  In mil­i­tary terms, a cav­a­lier is the high­est point in a fort or cas­tle and its pur­pose is to pro­vide a high obser­va­tion point from which sen­tinels can observe ene­my oper­a­tions.  In colo­nial times, a sen­tinel stand­ing at el caballero could see across the entire 47 square mile islet form east to west and north to south.  After walk­ing back down the ramp to the main square, you’ll see three large tun­nels on the east­ern corner.

©-2007_0036-650px

North city wall as seen from “El Caballero de San Miguel” at Fort San Cristóbal.

Fort San Cristóbal has an exten­sive tun­nel sys­tem that was used to move sup­plies, per­son­nel and weapons to dif­fer­ent areas.  The tun­nel on your right goes from the exte­ri­or ramp to the fort’s infor­ma­tion area and sou­venir shop.  The oth­er two are phys­i­cal­ly under­neath the ramp.

Tunnels at Fort San Cristobal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Tun­nels at Fort San Cristobal

Of these, the one on the right leads to the main bat­tery on the sec­ond lev­el.  Canons on this lev­el pro­tect­ed the fort from both land and sea attacks.  How­ev­er, the num­ber of canons wasn’t enough to match the num­ber of embra­sures, so they were mount­ed on wheels and moved around as need­ed.  Larg­er canons were moved up and down the ramps using a sophis­ti­cat­ed rope and pul­ley sys­tem called a block and tackle.

THE DEVIL’S SENTRY BOX

If you walk towards the east­ern­most cor­ner of the sec­ond lev­el plaza you will arrive at a lone sen­try box that offers an excel­lent view of sev­er­al impor­tant areas.  As you enter the nar­row walk­way that leads to the sen­try box, right before enter­ing the box, take a look down towards your left and you’ll see the famous “Gari­ta del Dia­blo” or Devil’s sen­try box sit­ting at the very base of Fort San Cristobal.

Span­ish sol­diers used Sen­try box­es to pro­tect the city walls around the clock. Some of these were close between, but oth­ers were more dis­tant and soli­tary.  At night the guards would occa­sion­al­ly shout a call to oth­er guards in their box­es so as to check on their where­abouts and avoid falling asleep.

–Guard, be alert, one would shout. And the near­est would answer back:
–Alert, I am!

Among all the box­es there was one, the most dis­tant and lone­ly, that sat close to the water, at the very base of Fort San Cristo­bal. In the silence of the night, the swish­ing of the sea would pro­duce a noise that seemed as if all the bad spir­its were talk­ing to each other.

Sol­diers didn’t like this box at all, as rumor had it that strange nois­es and spir­its were heard there every night.

The Devil's Sentry Box, Fort San Cristóbal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Dev­il’s Sen­try Box

The night the Devil’s Sen­try Box got its name it was Sanchez’ turn to stand guard.  Sanchez was born in Andalu­sia and was a very fair-skinned lad.  In fact, he was rather pale, but was still a very hand­some man.  His fel­low sol­diers called him Flor de Aza­har, after the white flower that grows abun­dant­ly in the Andalu­sian region of Spain. He was a mem­ber of the Cav­al­ry Reg­i­ment, and was also an excel­lent gui­tar player.

As always, the occa­sion­al cries from one guard to anoth­er were heard, but noth­ing was heard from Sanchez’ box.  Only the whistling wind and the rush­ing of the sea was heard on that pitch-black night.  Fear reigned among the oth­er guards dur­ing the remain­der of the night, not know­ing what could have hap­pened to their friend.

At sun­rise, they all rushed to Sanchez’ box to find out why he hadn’t answered.

They found his rifle and his uni­form, but Sanchez had van­ished with­out a trace. The super­sti­tious sol­diers spread the rumor that he had been sur­prised and tak­en away by the Dev­il.  Since that day on, the sen­try box was called “The Dev­il’s Sen­try Box”.

The Devil's Sentry Box, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Dev­il’s Sen­try Box

But very few were aware that Sanchez was in love with a beau­ti­ful half-breed girl named Diana. The girl’s step­moth­er didn’t approve of their rela­tion­ship, and Sanchez’ com­man­der also pro­hib­it­ed the romance, because of the girl’s dark skin.

But Flor de Aza­har would com­mu­ni­cate with the girl using his gui­tar. At night he would play his gui­tar and sing. In his songs he would com­mu­ni­cate his mes­sages to Diana.

One night he sent a mes­sage that only she could under­stand, that said: “Tomor­row at night, go and find your love, because far from your arms, his heart is dying…”

The fol­low­ing night, Diana arose late at night and left her house to find her lover. They met at the Sen­try box, where Sanchez was stand­ing guard, and decid­ed to go far away and live togeth­er forever.

Diana had brought civil­ian clothes for Sanchez to wear, so he left his rifle and uni­form and the cou­ple escaped to the moun­tains where they lived hap­pi­ly ever after.

EL ABANICO

As you lift your head for­ward you’ll see var­i­ous oth­er impor­tant fea­tures.  In the dis­tance you’ll see the Puer­to Rico Capi­tol build­ing, which sits at the very edge of what used to be Fort San Cristóbal’s glacis.

Right in front of the Capi­tol build­ing you’ll see a small tri­an­gu­lar fort that sits at the very front of San Cristobal’s out­er defens­es.  Its name is “El Aban­i­co”, and from the top it resem­bles the hand­held fans that are so pop­u­lar among Span­ish women.

El Abanico, Fort San Cristobal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

El Aban­i­co

Fort San Cristóbal was a mil­i­tary com­plex unlike any oth­er that com­bined lay­er upon lay­er of offen­sive and defen­sive sys­tems.  Would’be attack­ers would be met by a series of small­er forts called rav­elins, which could eas­i­ly repel less sophis­ti­cat­ed forces.  Behind the rav­elins there was a dry moat where attack­ing forces would become sit­ting ducks for the forts archers and mus­ke­teers.  Atop the walls there were bas­tions, which were equipped with can­nons and mus­ke­teers and were much taller and hard­er to over­take.  And above it all was “El Caballero de San Miguel”, which offered a van­tage point cov­er­ing the entire islet and was also equipped with canons and musketeers.

By any stan­dard, Fort San Cristóbal was a mil­i­tary instal­la­tion like no oth­er in the New World and the prime exam­ple of state-of-the-art mil­i­tary engi­neer­ing in its time.

The dungeon at Fort San Cristóbal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

The dun­geon at Fort San Cristóbal

THE DUNGEON

This leaves us with only one area of the fort that we haven’t dis­cussed.  On the north­east cor­ner of the main square there is still anoth­er tun­nel that goes right past the fort’s dun­geon and ends at the north­ern end of the dry moat.  To the untrained eye, this might seem like an easy way to pen­e­trate the fort.  Just go up the tun­nel and “voila” you’re in the main square.

But a clos­er look at the inside of the tun­nel will prove this sort of plan sui­ci­dal.  The large grooves you see every twen­ty or thir­ty feet divide the tun­nel into sec­tions.  If you look close to the floor you’ll also see a series of small nich­es that could be filled with explo­sives to bring down that par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of the tun­nel.  By plac­ing large remov­able doors at the grooves imme­di­ate­ly behind each sec­tion, the Spaniards could selec­tive­ly demol­ish sec­tions of the tun­nel and stop attack­ers before they reached the main square.

At the upper end of the tun­nel you’ll find the fort’s dun­geon, a place so mis­er­able that even today it sends chills up your spine.  Imag­ine a place that’s hot and humid, con­stant­ly dark, the air is stale and smells of human excre­ment.  Now throw in a group of sweaty pris­on­ers, rats, roach­es and ticks.  Oh yeah, and the only source of air and light is a small port at the end of the room, about the size of a small book.  This pret­ty much describes the human liv­ing –or dying– con­di­tions inside the 18th cen­tu­ry San Cristóbal dungeon.

Original drawings by an inmate at the Fort San Cristóbal dungeon, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Orig­i­nal draw­ings by an inmate at the Fort San Cristóbal dungeon

On the left wall, as you enter, there’s a series of draw­ings made by one of the inmates that is sus­pect­ed to have been a cap­tain.  Experts have come to this con­clu­sion because of the great detail they offer of the ship’s sails and rig­ging.  The red pig­ment used in the draw­ings is anoth­er clue that the pris­on­er was no ordi­nary sol­dier.  It’s a rare sub­stance that con­tains a great amount of iron, that when exposed to the salty air would oxi­dize and become a red­dish col­or.  Final­ly, it would have been close to impos­si­ble to make these draw­ings in the dungeon’s pitch-black envi­ron­ment.  There­fore, his­to­ri­ans sus­pect that the pris­on­er had out­side help that pro­vid­ed him with some sort of lamp and draw­ing mate­ri­als to make his stay less miserable.

As you exit the tun­nel, look back over the entrance and observe the lit­tle white bomb over the entrance, this will con­firm its pur­pose and design.  Imme­di­ate­ly to your right there’s a closed door with two small ports at it’s upper left.  Place your hand into the ports and feel the cool air com­ing out.  This used to be the fort’s pow­der­house and it’s the most pro­tect­ed room in the fort.  It’s designed to keep the pow­der cool and dry and as pro­tect­ed as pos­si­ble from ene­my fire.

If you wish to explore Fort San Cristo­bal in even greater detail, there are ranger-guid­ed tours that explore every inch of the fort as well as the out­er defens­es.  Ask any park ranger for details.

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.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *