50 Fun Facts About San Juan, Puerto Rico

Mayor Felisa Rincón de Gautier had planeloads of what flown to San Juan for children in the 1950s?

Snow arrived by plane in 1952, 1953 and 1954 so that children who had never seen it could play in it. Doña Fela was also the first woman mayor of a capital city in the Americas.

Old San Juan's seaside barrio La Perla drew curious tourists after featuring in which 2017 music video?

Despacito, by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, was filmed in La Perla and has drawn billions of YouTube views. The barrio was built just outside the old city walls.

Which Oscar-winning Hollywood actor was born in San Juan in 1974 under the family surname Bottom?

Joaquin Phoenix was born Joaquin Rafael Bottom in a San Juan hospital in October 1974. He went on to win the Best Actor Oscar for playing the title role in Joker.

Which New York Giants star played beside Roberto Clemente for San Juan's Santurce club in winter 1954–55?

Willie Mays arrived as the National League MVP and won the Puerto Rican league's MVP award and batting title too. That Santurce roster was nicknamed the Panic Squad.

At midnight on the Noche de San Juan, what do Puerto Ricans traditionally do at the beach?

Fall backward into the sea, and do it three, seven or twelve times: that is the midnight ritual. Any water will do, and some people settle for a river, a lake or even a bathtub.

A San Juan hotel and a local restaurant each claim to have invented which rum cocktail in the mid-1900s?

Piña colada is claimed by the Caribe Hilton, for bartender Ramón Marrero in 1954, and by the restaurant Barrachina, for 1963. Puerto Rico proclaimed it the official drink in 1978.

Spanish colonists first called the city of San Juan 'Puerto Rico', a name that means what in English?

Rich port was the city, while the island carried the saint's name. Traders came to use the harbor's name for the whole island, and the two names traded places.

The blue cobblestones of Old San Juan first crossed the Atlantic in Spanish ships, serving as what?

Ballast kept the lightly loaded ships stable on the voyage out. The stones were unloaded in San Juan and road builders laid them as paving; the slag turns blue with age and exposure.

Which animals around San Juan's El Morro fortress did the National Park Service plan to remove in 2023?

Stray cats, about 200 of them, are thought to descend from animals brought in to keep down rats. The removal plan was paused after a cat-welfare group sued.

Which Old San Juan building is the oldest executive mansion still in use anywhere in the Americas?

La Fortaleza has housed Puerto Rico's governors since the 16th century. It began in the 1530s as the first fort the Spanish built to defend San Juan Bay.

The windy lawn in front of San Juan's El Morro fortress is a favorite spot for which pastime?

Kite flying fills the lawn on windy days, alongside picnics and stargazing. In the early 1900s the US military had covered the same ground with baseball diamonds and a golf course.

San Juan takes its name from which saint, whose name Christopher Columbus first gave to the whole island?

John the Baptist was honored when Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista on his second voyage in 1493. Puerto Rico still marks the saint's feast with a night-long party each June.

Which MLB team played part of its 2003 and 2004 home schedule at San Juan's Hiram Bithorn Stadium?

Montreal Expos games in San Juan used field dimensions set to match Olympic Stadium back home. After 2004 the club moved to Washington and became the Nationals.

Shots from San Juan's El Morro at a German ship are widely regarded as America's first in which war?

World War I had not yet drawn in the United States when Lt. Teófilo Marxuach opened fire on the Odenwald, an unarmed merchant ship trying to leave San Juan Bay without permission.

San Juan is recognized as the epicenter of which music genre, which took off there as underground music in the 1990s?

Reggaeton took shape in the city's underground scene from hip-hop, local urban beats and Panama's Spanish-language reggae. San Juan natives such as Daddy Yankee then carried it around the world.

San Juan is home to El Gran Combo, a band nicknamed 'the university' of which dance music genre?

Salsa has one of its world capitals in San Juan, which has served as the home of the World Salsa Congress since the late 1990s.

The San Sebastián Street Festival in Old San Juan each January unofficially marks the end of which season?

Christmas celebrations in Puerto Rico run deep into January, and La SanSe is their unofficial last party, drawing more than 200,000 people. It began as a street's feast for Saint Sebastian.

Old San Juan occupies the western end of what kind of landform, joined to the rest of the city by bridges?

An islet called the Isleta de San Juan holds the old city, linked to the main island by two bridges and a causeway. The site guards the mouth of San Juan Bay.

Which Spanish explorer, tied by legend to the Fountain of Youth, is entombed in Puerto Rico's capital?

Juan Ponce de León died in Havana in 1521; his remains lay in San Juan's San José Church from 1559 until 1836 and were later moved to the cathedral. Historians treat the fountain story as a myth.

San Juan's gunners put a cannonball through the flagship cabin of which English sea captain in 1595?

Francis Drake was beaten off after defenders drew a metal chain across the entrance to San Juan Bay to keep his fleet out. He never took the city.

A fleet of which nationality, under a captain the Spanish called Balduino Enrico, burned San Juan in 1625?

Dutch ships, 17 of them, took the town but could not take El Morro, so the attackers burned San Juan as they withdrew. Their commander's own name was Boudewijn Hendricksz.

The Earl of Cumberland's English force seized San Juan in 1598 but left within months, driven out by what?

Dysentery crippled hundreds of his men, so the English gave up the city and sailed home. It was the only time El Morro was taken in battle.

Which San Juan fortress, built to stop attacks by land, is the largest Spain built in the New World?

San Cristóbal reached its full size in 1783, after earlier invaders had twice taken the city from its landward side. It rises about 150 feet above the shoreline.

The garitas that jut from Old San Juan's walls, now a symbol of the city, are what?

Sentry boxes gave lookouts a view along the walls and out to sea. The most famous, the Garita del Diablo, comes with legends of soldiers who disappeared from inside it.

In 1983, the Spanish forts and walls of Old San Juan received which international designation from UNESCO?

World Heritage Site status covers the forts, the surviving walls and the governor's mansion together. It was the eleventh such listing in the United States.

Puerto Rico's marble-clad Capitol in San Juan was designed to resemble which ancient Roman building?

The Pantheon was the model for architect Rafael Carmoega, who also took inspiration from the Low Memorial Library in New York City. Mosaics decorate the ceiling of the Capitol's dome.

San Juan's Condado Vanderbilt Hotel of 1919 was designed by the architects of which New York City landmark?

Grand Central Terminal and the hotel both came from the firm Warren and Wetmore. The hotel still stands on Ashford Avenue in the beachfront Condado district.

The 1937 tower of the University of Puerto Rico's main San Juan campus is named for which US president?

Franklin Roosevelt took an interest in the building of the university, so the tower was christened in his honor. On campus it is known simply as La Torre.

Which Cuban-founded rum maker runs the world's largest rum distillery across the bay from Old San Juan?

Bacardi bought its land in Cataño in 1958, and Puerto Rico's governor dubbed the plant the Cathedral of Rum. A ferry links Cataño with Old San Juan.

San Juan began in 1508 as which low-lying, swampy settlement before its colonists moved to the present site?

Caparra was named after an abandoned Roman village in Spain, and its foundations survive in neighboring Guaynabo. Trouble with health, defense and supplies pushed the settlers out by 1521.

The 1837 La Princesa building on Old San Juan's bayside promenade, now tourism offices, was built as what?

A prison first known as the Real Cárcel La Princesa was built here just outside the old city walls. The Puerto Rico Tourism Company works there now.

Old San Juan's Hotel El Convento was founded in 1651 as a house for nuns of which religious order?

Carmelites moved in after a wealthy widow, Ana Lanzós, gave her money and her own house to found the convent. Closed in 1903, the building reopened in 1962 as a hotel.

Like San Juan and Mexico's Campeche, which Canadian city still has its colonial-era defensive walls?

Quebec City, Campeche and San Juan are counted as the three walled colonial cities left in North America. About three-quarters of San Juan's walls still stand.

San Juan's biggest indoor arena, the Choliseo, is named for José Miguel Agrelot, who was famous as what?

A comedian and broadcaster, Agrelot created the character Don Cholito, and the arena's nickname blends that name with the Spanish word coliseo.

San Juan's main airport, Luis Muñoz Marín International, actually lies in which neighboring municipality?

Carolina's beachfront Isla Verde district holds the runways, and the airport was first known as Isla Verde International. Its namesake was Puerto Rico's first popularly elected governor.

San Juan's Tren Urbano, which was inaugurated in December 2004, was the Caribbean's first what?

Rapid transit system is the term: the automated line runs about 10.7 miles through San Juan and the neighboring municipalities of Guaynabo and Bayamón.

Plaza Las Américas, in San Juan's Hato Rey district, holds which record for the whole Caribbean?

Largest shopping mall in the Caribbean, it was also the first indoor mall built in Puerto Rico. Many locals simply call it Plaza.

The Milla de Oro, or Golden Mile, in San Juan's Hato Rey district is the center of which industry?

Banking lined the strip with the headquarters of local and international firms, which is why Hato Rey is often called the Wall Street of the Caribbean.

By tradition, Spain's last governor in San Juan struck which object with his sword in 1898?

A clock in the governor's mansion was stopped by the blow, the story goes, fixing the moment Spain lost Puerto Rico. The governor was Ricardo de Ortega.

Hato Rey, a district of San Juan, is named for which royal animals that grazed there in the 1500s?

Cattle owned by the Spanish crown grazed there as early as the 16th century, and the name means the King's Herd. Office towers stand on the old pastures now.

Which former town, home to the University of Puerto Rico's main campus, was merged into San Juan in 1951?

Río Piedras made San Juan four times its previous size when the two municipalities merged. The old town is named for the river that runs through it, the 'stones river'.

In San Juan legend, British besiegers in 1797 mistook a torchlit procession of praying women for what?

Reinforcements seemed to be pouring into the city, so the story goes, and the British gave up the siege. Statues in Old San Juan's Plazuela de la Rogativa honor the bishop and the townswomen.

The Capilla del Cristo in Old San Juan recalls a legend of a rider who went over a precipice during what?

A horse race down Calle del Cristo ended with the rider going over the edge, and in the pious telling he was miraculously saved. The 18th-century chapel was built at the spot.

Which San Juan-born star of Cyrano de Bergerac became the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award?

José Ferrer won Best Actor for the 1950 film after playing the same part on stage. In 1985 he also became the first actor to receive the National Medal of Arts.

Which Catalan cellist founded a San Juan music festival and the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s?

Pablo Casals had a mother born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, and he made the island his home from 1956. He died in San Juan in 1973 at the age of 96.

Old San Juan's Raíces Fountain honors Puerto Rico's Spanish, African and which indigenous roots?

Taíno ancestry joins the European and African strands in the 1992 sculpture fountain by Luis Sanguino. Its name, Raíces, is the Spanish word for roots.

Which Old San Juan house was built in 1521 for a conquistador's family, who kept it for over 250 years?

Casa Blanca began as the first fortification on the site and stayed with the family until they sold it to the Spanish government in 1779.

Puerto Rico's longest bridge, the Teodoro Moscoso in San Juan, is lined on both sides with a row of what?

Flagpoles carry alternating American and Puerto Rican flags along the 1.4-mile toll bridge, which has crossed the San José Lagoon since 1994.

Old San Juan's San José Church, begun in 1528, is a rare New World example of which medieval building style?

Gothic design makes it one of the earliest surviving examples of 16th-century Spanish Gothic architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Dominican friars built it for their convent.

The Comparsa de los Cabezudos, a highlight of Old San Juan's San Sebastián Street Festival, is a parade of what?

Giant papier-mâché heads with exaggerated, often comic faces set off from the San Juan Cathedral, then dance and sing their way through the crowds.