Fortaleza San Luis

About this place

Fortaleza San Luis is a fortress near the Yaque del Norte River in southwest Santiago de los Caballeros, the second city of the Dominican Republic. It saw battles in the War of Restoration, later served as a municipal prison and has become a museum, its yellow walls and cannon telling an important part of the country's 19th-century story. When President Pedro Santana returned the country to Spanish rule in March 1861, Spain sent troops to the fort. Dominican forces retook it by September 1863. It became a military school with its first graduates in 1875, a hospital was added in 1884, and in 1886 President Ulises Heureaux gave it a clock tower. US Marines held it from 1916 to 1924, and it became a museum in 2004. You enter through a white and yellow arched gate to paved courts, lined by long yellow buildings with balconies and red windows. Old cannon and gun carriages stand on the square, along with busts of national heroes before a round tree and red modern figures. The rooms hold coins and banknotes, Taíno stone tools and flaking old prison walls. It lies in central Santiago, 38 km in a straight line from Puerto Plata and 24 km from La Vega Vieja. The Monument to the Heroes is in the same city, so combine them. Bring a hat, as the courts are sunny, do not climb on the cannon, ask about picture rules in the rooms and check times before you go.