La Puerta del Conde (The Count's Gate) was the main entrance to the fortified city of Santo Domingo (in present-day

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

), named to honor Governor Captain-General Bernardino de Meneses Bracamonte y Zapata, 1st Count of Peñalva, who during his tenure saved the city from a siege in 1655 by Englishmen General

Robert Venables Robert Venables (ca. 1613–1687), was an English soldier from Cheshire, who fought for Parliament in the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and captured Jamaica in 1655. When the Anglo-Spanish War began in 1654, he was made joint co ...

and Admiral

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...

amid the Third Anglo-Spanish War. The gate is part of a structure called El Baluarte del Conde (The Count's Bulwark), a fort in Ciudad Colonial, the colonial area of Santo Domingo. The fort was part of a larger system of fortifications that ran along a

defensive wall A defensive wall is a fortification usually used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. The walls can range from simple palisades or earthworks to extensive military fortifications with towers, bastions and gates ...

which surrounded Ciudad Colonial. The Altar of the Fatherland and Independence Park are located there. Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, one of the Dominican Founding Fathers, proclaimed Dominican independence and raised the first Dominican Flag, on February 27, 1844.

History

Colonial era

The construction of this site began in 1543 and the site was originally named Fort San Genaro. It was designed to defend Santo Domingo from invading armies and attacks by pirates and corsairs. The ''murralla'' (defensive wall) was modified in 1655 after the English, led by

and

, undertook the Siege of Santo Domingo. The invasion was thwarted by Spanish troops commanded by the Captain General of the Colony, Don Bernardino de Meneses y Bracamonte, Count of Peñalva. Due to his valor, the site was named in his honor ''La Puerta del Conde''. The muralla was appended to Fort San Genaro and the structures became indistinguishable and known since 1655 as ''La Puerta del Conde''. El Baluarte del Conde was a typical model of the school of 17th-century

bastion fortress A bastion fort or ''trace italienne'' (a phrase derived from non-standard French, literally meaning ''Italian outline'') is a fortification in a style that evolved during the early modern period of gunpowder when the cannon came to domina ...

es of Italian influence, which are preserved in the Caribbean as a major legacy of 17th-century fortifications. The city's

reached its full footprint by about the 18th century with the addition of various defensive structures, effectively enclosing Colonial Santo Domingo in a pentagonal wall. La Puerta del Conde was the western entrance into Colonial Santo Domingo. Not much remains of the defensive walls which once surrounded the entire city, except for several sections with gates and forts, including: La Puerta del Conde, La Puerta de la Misericordia, Fuerte San Jose, Fuerte Santa Barbara, Fuerte San Gil, etc.

Contemporary Dominican Republic

Today, La Puerta del Conde serves as the main entrance to El Parque Nacional (The National Park), also referred to as Independence Park. Inscribed above the arch of La Puerta del Conde is ''"ỉDulce et Decori est pro patria moriḯ"'', in Latin, which means ''"It is indeed sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland''". El Baluarte del Conde is a symbol of independence and contains several monuments and structures which attest to the Dominican struggle for freedom. It is common to refer to the fort as ''La Puerta del Conde/Parque Nacional'', being that these are the two most visible and relevant symbols of the

; the park is where the Altar de la Patria (the Altar of the Fatherland) is located.

Parque Independencia

El Parque Independencia (Independence Park) is a historic park within the confines of El Baluarte del Conde so named because it contains the site where Dominican independence was proclaimed in 1844. The Altar de la Patria (see below) is located in the Park. Parque Independencia is nowadays only bound by a section of the original defensive wall, La Puerta del Conde. In 1912, the Park was redesigned by architect

Antonin Nechodoma Antonin Nechodoma (1877–1928), was a Czech architect who practiced in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic from 1905 to 1928. He is known for the introduction of the Prairie Style to the Caribbean and the integration of Arts and Crafts elements to ...

to its present state; no longer was there a street passing through the park. This redesign later facilitated the construction of the Altar de la Patria.

Altar de la Patria

The

Altar de la Patria Altar de la Patria, or Altar of the Homeland, is a white marble mausoleum in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic that houses the remains of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic: Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, and Ram� ...

, or Altar of the Fatherland, is a

mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be cons ...

made of white marble, built in 1976. The Altar houses the remains of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic:

Juan Pablo Duarte Juan Pablo Duarte y Díez (January 26, 1813 – July 15, 1876) was a Dominican military leader, writer, activist, and nationalist politician who was the foremost of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic and bears the title of Father of ...

, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, and Matías Ramón Mella, Within the mausoleum there are statues of the founding fathers, carved by Italian sculptor Nicholas Arrighini, and there is also an "eternal flame" that is kept lit in memory of the patriots.

References