サント・ドミンゴ

I’ve been wanting to understand the layers of Santo Domingo’s colonial past, and this book’s focus on the city as the oldest European settlement in the Americas delivered exactly that. The chapter on the Alcázar de Colón brought the architecture to life in a way I hadn’t expected.

I read this cover to cover on the flight down, and the sections on the Zona Colonial's colonial-era streets gave me way more context than any blog post did. It's a slim travel book, so it actually fit in my day bag without weighing me down.

Bought this before a long weekend there and the maps of the Zona Colonial were genuinely useful for wandering on foot. It's a slim book, easy to toss in a day bag, and the sections on the city's history gave real context to the old buildings.