San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan ( san WHAHN, Spanish: [saŋ ˈxwan]; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory and insular area of the United States. San Juan was founded by Spanish colonists in 1521, who called it Ciudad de Puerto Rico (Spanish for "Rich Port City").
Puerto Rico's capital is the second oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, after Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, founded in 1496, and is the oldest European-established city under United States sovereignty. Several historical buildings are located in the historic district of Old San Juan; among the most notable are the city's former defensive walls, Fort San Felipe del Morro and Fort San Cristóbal, and La Fortaleza, the oldest executive mansion in continuous use in the Americas. These historic sites were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
Today, San Juan is Puerto Rico's most important seaport and is one of the island's most notable financial, cultural, and tourism centers. The population of the metropolitan statistical area, including San Juan and the municipalities of Bayamón, Guaynabo, Cataño, Canóvanas, Caguas, Toa Alta, Toa Baja, Carolina and Trujillo Alto, is about 2.443 million inhabitants; thus, about 76% of the population of Puerto Rico now lives and works in this area. San Juan is also a principal city of the San Juan-Caguas-Fajardo Combined Statistical Area. The city has been the host of events within the sports community, including the 1979 Pan American Games; 1966 Central American and Caribbean Games; events of the 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2026 World Baseball Classics; and the Caribbean Series, the Special Olympics and MLB San Juan Series in 2010.
San Juan is widely recognized as one of the global capitals of salsa. The city has been the epicenter for the development, production, and international expansion of the genre, hosting historic institutions like El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico (known as the "University of Salsa") and serving as the functional home of the World Salsa Congress since the late 1990s. San Juan is also recognized as the epicenter of reggaeton's global development. From its origins as underground music in the 1990s, the city served as the place where the genre was born by blending hip-hop with local urban beats and tropical expressions. Today, the genre continues to evolve within the island.