Santo Domingo founded

1496 CE.

Shown on the map at 18.462°, -69.936°.

Santo Domingo, officially known as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. As of 2022, the city center had a population of 1,029,110 while its metropolitan area, Greater Santo Domingo, had a population of 4,274,651. The city is coterminous with the boundaries of the Distrito Nacional (D.N.), itself bordered on three sides by Santo Domingo Province. Santo Domingo was founded in 1496 by the Spanish Empire and is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas. It was the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World, the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo is the site of the first university, cathedral, castle, monastery, and fortress in the New World. The city's Colonial Zone was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Santo Domingo was called Ciudad Trujillo (Spanish pronunciation: [sjuˈðað tɾuˈxiʝo]), from 1936 to 1961, after the Dominican Republic's dictator, Rafael Trujillo, named the capital after himself.

Text from the Wikipedia article Santo Domingo, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Everything else in 1496 CE

HistoryLayer draws the world as it was in any year from 123,000 BCE to 2026. Move the slider and the borders redraw for that year; the map carries 23,890 events, 12,790 people, 837 wars and 13,183 cities, each one readable in place. Signing in is optional and lets you keep what you find.

HistoryLayer
1914CE
World Wars
123,000 BCE2026 CE
54 stops — one per surviving map on file, evenly spaced drag the pin · ←→ steps one stop the same 54 stops by true elapsed time ↑
Map & filters
Show on the map
Filter
Colour by
Polity Empire