Santa María la Antigua del Darién—turned into Dariena in the Latin of De Orbo Novo—was a Spanish colonial town founded in 1510 by

Vasco Núñez de Balboa Vasco Núñez de Balboa (; c. 1475around January 12–21, 1519) was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an ...

, 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 ...

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 a ...

, within the municipality of Unguía in the

Chocó Department Choco Department is a department of Western Colombia known for its large Afro-Colombian population. It is in the west of the country, and is the only Colombian department to have coastlines on both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. It ...

. 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, ...

s in mainland America. After

Pascual de Andagoya Pascual de Andagoya (1495–1548) was a Spanish Basque conquistador. He was born in the village of Andagoya, in the valley of Cuartango (Álava), in Spain. As often happened at the time, Andagoya left as an explorer of the New World at a very ...

, 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 loca ...

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