Santa María la Antigua del Darién—turned into Dariena in the Latin of

De Orbo Novo ''Decades of the New World'' (''De orbe novo decades'') by Peter Martyr is a series of letters and reports of the early explorations of Central and South America that was published beginning 1511 and later anthologized. Being among the earliest ...

—was a Spanish colonial town founded in 1510 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, located in present-day

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

approximately south of

Acandí Acandí is a town in Colombia at the northern extremity of the department of Chocó in the northwest of Colombia, bordering Panama and the Caribbean Sea. It is from the department's capital, Quibdó. Its average temperature is . It was founded ar ...

, within the municipality of

Unguía Unguía is a municipality and town in the far north of the Chocó Department, Colombia. Climate Unguía has a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), Ge ...

in the Chocó Department. It was the first city founded by

conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...

s in mainland America. After Pascual de Andagoya, a Spanish-Basque conquistador under the direction of Panama governor Pedrarias Dávila, founded

Panama City Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is locat ...

in 1519, Santa María la Antigua del Darién was abandoned and in 1524 was attacked and burned by the indigenous people. In 2012 the lost site of the town was rediscovered, and in 2019 the government of Colombia opened the Parque Arqueológico e Histórico de Santa María de Belén la Antigua del Darién.

Foundation

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Santa Maria La Antigua Del Darien Populated places established in 1510 1519 disestablishments in Colombia