Santo Domingo · Things to do

The oldest cathedral in the Americas, on Parque Colón in the middle of the colonial quarter. It is a working church as well as a monument, so hours bend around services and shoulders and knees need covering.

Diego Colón's early sixteenth-century palace at the head of Plaza España, now furnished as a museum of the period. Small enough for an hour, and the best single building in the quarter if you only see one interior.

The first paved street in the Americas, running from the Alcázar down to the Fortaleza Ozama — the oldest European military structure in the New World, with the Torre del Homenaje still standing over the river mouth. Walk it end to end; it takes fifteen minutes and covers most of the quarter's early history.

A collapsed limestone cave system east of the river holding a set of clear underground lakes, reached by steps down from ground level. Roughly fifteen minutes by taxi from the Ciudad Colonial and easily combined with the Faro a Colón next door.

The Columbus Lighthouse: a vast cross-shaped concrete monument in the Parque Mirador del Este, built for the 1992 quincentenary and holding a mausoleum the Dominican Republic maintains as Columbus's tomb. Divisive architecture, genuinely strange to stand inside.