The Isabela National Park is a beautiful protected reserve located in the municipality of Luperón, Puerto Plata province, on the North coast of the Dominican Republic that has great historical attractions and offers you a unique experience.
The National Historic and Archaeological Park of Villa de La Isabela is a place of great historical significance as it houses the remains of the first village founded by Europeans on the American continent.
Currently it is a complex made up of three main areas that complement each other, both historical sources and archaeological research agree that the main town functioned as a military settlement and was surrounded by a wall built for protection.
Inside there were five stone buildings distributed over an area of approx. of 2 hectares: the Admiral’s house, the royal warehouse or alhóndiga, the powder keg, the church and the watchtower.
To these structures was originally added a set of wooden huts with vegetable roofs (similar to Taino bohíos) whose traces are no longer visible and a cemetery with indigenous burials prior to the conquest that was also used for Christian burials from the colonial era. .
Following the coastline, about 200 meters southeast of the Admiral’s house, is the cliff that served as a quarry to extract the rock used in the constructions, about 2 km. from the military settlement, on the west bank of the Bajabonico River, was the civil settlement, an area also occupied by the Spanish and apparently used for agricultural and livestock activities.
They are made up of 26 buildings of various sizes that house the administrative, exhibition and recreation facilities of the park, today a recovery area, a complementary protected area, of approx. 44 hectares, which surrounds different areas.
In addition to these archaeological finds, the entire area is of environmental interest thanks to its natural landscapes with valleys and cliffs, the various species of mangroves that populate the mouths of the Unijica and Bajabonico rivers, and its characteristic coral reef coastline.
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How to get to Isabela National Park: