page_title: Santiago de los Caballeros
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Santiago de los Caballeros / Arts and culture / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Hotel Mercedes, Santiago, Dominican Republic
context_page_description: Santiago de los Caballeros, also known as Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros or simply Santiago, is the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic and the fourth-largest city in the Caribbean. It is the capital of Santiago Province and major metropolis in the north-central region of the country. The city has a total population of 1,173,015 inhabitants. Santiago is located approximately 155 km northwest of the capital Santo Domingo with an average altitude of 178 meters.
  Founded in 1495 during the first wave of European settlement in the New World, the city is the "first Santiago of the Americas". Today it is one of the Dominican Republic's cultural, political, industrial and financial centers. Due to its location in the fertile Cibao Valley it has a robust agricultural sector and is a leading exporter of rum, textiles, and cigars. Santiago is known as "La Ciudad Corazón".
context_section_description: The Cathedral of Santiago was built in 1895 by Onofre de Lora, an architect native to the city.
  The Hermanos Patiño Bridge is both the largest and oldest bridge in the city connecting the North and South sides of the city of Santiago. Its construction was started by Rafael Leónidas Trujillo and inaugurated in 1962, one year after his death. The bridge is named after the five brothers that died in an effort to end Trujillo's regime and dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in the mid 20th century.  The anti-Trujillo legacy of the Patiño family did not begin with the brothers, but with their father who was killed in 1931 in the first anti-Trujillo insurrection of the Dominican Republic.
  On a hill overlooking Santiago is a 67 meters (220 ft) high marble monument. Construction of the monument began in 1944 on the orders of then-dictator Rafael Trujillo. He named it the "Trujillo's Monument to Peace", and was designed by architect Henry Gazón Bona. Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, after which the monument was renamed the "Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration", in remembrance of the Independence Restoration War of 1863, in which the Dominican Republic regained its independence from Spain.
caption: Hotel Mercedes in Santiago's historic center.
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