page_title: Central University of Venezuela
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Central University of Venezuela / History / Origins
context_page_description: The Central University of Venezuela is a public university of Venezuela located in Caracas. It is widely held to be the highest ranking institution in the country, and it also ranks 18th in Latin America. Founded in 1721, it is the oldest university in Venezuela and one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere.
  The main university campus, Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, was designed by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and it is considered a masterpiece of urban planning and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000.
context_section_description: The origin of the university goes back to Friar Antonio González de Acuña (1620–1682), a Peruvian Bishop who studied theology at the Universidad de San Marcos and founded in 1673 the Seminary Saint Rose of Lima in Caracas named after the first Catholic Saint born in the Americas. In the following years, Friar Diego de Baños y Sotomayor broadened the scope of the seminary by creating the School and Seminary of Saint Rose of Lima in 1696. Yet, in spite of the creation of the seminar, students who wished to obtain a university degree had to travel great distances to attend universities located in Santo Domingo, Bogotá or Mexico City. Given such harsh circumstances, the Rector of the Seminary, Francisco Martínez de Porras and the people of Caracas requested the royal court in Madrid the creation of a university in Venezuela (then part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada). As a result, on 22 December 1721 Philip V of Spain signed in Lerma a Royal Decree that transformed the School-Seminary into the Universidad Real y Pontificia de Caracas. The Royal Decree was concurred by Pope Innocent XIII with a Papal bull in 1722. The university offered degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Canon law and Medicine. Until 1810, when the Seminary of Saint Bonaventura located in Mérida became the Universidad de Los Andes, the Universidad Real y Pontificia de Caracas was the only university existing in the country.
caption: The old campus in 1911. The building also served as the location for the National Library when it was founded in 1833. It is currently known as the Palacio de las Academias which is Spanish for "Palace of Academies"
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