Cathedral of San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Cathedral of San Juan in Old San Juan is among the oldest buildings in Puerto Rico and the Americas and is widely regarded as the oldest surviving purpose-built cathedral church in the Americas. Rooted in the earliest years of Spanish colonization, it stood at the center of the first Catholic diocese established in the New World after Columbus, with Bishop Alonso Manso appointed in 1511. After an earlier wooden cathedral was destroyed by hurricane, the present stone structure rose between 1535 and 1542. Repeated earthquakes reshaped it from early Gothic beginnings into its present Baroque form. The cathedral houses the tomb of Juan Ponce de León, major shrines, and treasured records of Puerto Rico’s religious and civic history.