Alcázar de Colón, Museum in Colonial City of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The Alcázar de Colón stands on Plaza de España and is a coral limestone building with Gothic and Renaissance features. The structure comprises 22 surviving rooms that display different periods of colonial architecture.
Diego Columbus, son of Christopher Columbus, ordered this palace built between 1511 and 1514, following the design of a structure in Mancera de Abajo, Salamanca. It was the first fortified European palace in the Americas, built of coralline masonry, and three generations of the Columbus de Toledo family lived in it, possibly until 1577. In 1586 Francis Drake's forces captured and looted it, and after long litigation and decay it was restored between 1955 and 1957 by the architect Javier Barroso.
The palace takes its name from Diego Columbus and displays how European noble families lived in the New World. The rooms contain furniture and artwork from the 1500s that reflect the daily life of wealthy colonists.
The location sits on the main square of the old town and is easy to reach on foot. The surrounding area has many other historical buildings, so a longer walk through the neighborhood is worthwhile.
The palace holds the Caribbean's most important collection of European late medieval and Renaissance art, acquired in the 1950s. Its tapestry collection spans the 15th to 17th centuries, with pieces woven by the Flemish Van Den Hecke family after cartoons by Charles Le Brun.
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