San Juan travel guide

Top 10 sights in San Juan

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Jano Ťažký · CC BY-SA 3.0

   La Fortaleza

   A fortress begun in 1533 and converted into the governor's residence, and the oldest executive mansion still in use anywhere in the western hemisphere. Its blue and white courtyard is shown on guided tours, and it is World Heritage with the forts.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmoliver · CC BY-SA 3.0

   San Juan National Historic Site

   The national historic site covering the Spanish defences of Old San Juan — El Morro, San Cristóbal, the city walls and two small outlying forts. Together they are the oldest European masonry under the American flag, and World Heritage since 1983.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© Joshua Wood · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Castillo San Felipe del Morro

   A fortress begun in 1539 as a single tower and rebuilt over two and a half centuries into six levels rising forty-three metres from the sea. It held off Drake and the Dutch, fell only once, to the English in 1598, and the United States mounted anti-submarine guns on it in 1942.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© Jruizalvarez · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Old San Juan Historic District

   Seven blocks of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century streets on the tip of the islet, paved with blue-grey cobbles cast from iron furnace slag that arrived as ships' ballast. Around four hundred buildings survive, most of them restored since the 1950s.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© https://www.flickr.com/people/oquendo/ · CC BY 2.0

   Cathedral of San Juan Bautista

   A cathedral begun in 1521 and the second oldest in the Americas, though the present Gothic vaulting is a rebuilding after a hurricane stripped the first one. Ponce de León's marble tomb is in the transept and the body of a Roman martyr lies in a glass case beside it.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6

   Castillo San Cristóbal

   The largest fortification the Spanish built in the New World, covering eleven hectares on the landward side of the city — El Morro guarded the sea and this guarded the road. Its tunnels, dry moats and outworks are laid out in depth, five layers deep.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Yarfpr · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Mucarabones

   A rural barrio in the hills of Toa Alta outside San Juan, with around twenty-three thousand residents. It is one of the inland farming settlements that the metropolitan area has grown up to but not quite absorbed.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Yarfpr · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Candelaria

   A barrio on the coastal plain in Toa Baja, west of San Juan, where sugar plantations worked until the industry collapsed in the twentieth century. Housing has since filled most of the cane land.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9© Yarfpr · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Galateo

   A small barrio in the hills of Toa Alta with under six thousand residents, now largely a commuter settlement for the San Juan metropolitan area, which is fifteen minutes down the road.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Yarfpr · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Maguayo

    A barrio in the municipality of Dorado west of San Juan, in a valley between low hills, with about four and a half thousand residents. The coast north of it holds the resorts that Laurance Rockefeller developed in the 1950s.

    TiqetsKlook

Popular tickets & tours in San Juan

Live products and prices are provided directly by Klook.

KlookOpen San Juan activitiesBrowse tickets & toursKKdayOpen San Juan activitiesBrowse tickets & tours

Trending now

Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© Original uploader was Marine 69-71 at en.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Caparra

   The site of the first Spanish settlement on Puerto Rico, founded by Ponce de León in 1508 inland from the bay. Mosquitoes and bad water drove the colonists out to the islet in 1521, where they founded San Juan; the foundations and a small museum remain.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© The original uploader was Jmoliver at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Fortín de San Gerónimo

   A small fort at the mouth of the Condado lagoon on the eastern approach to the islet, built up in the eighteenth century. British troops attacking from that side in 1797 were held here, which is why San Juan stayed Spanish for another century.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3

   San Juan Antiguo

   The barrio that covers the old walled city, divided into seven sub-barrios and holding about seven thousand residents — enough that it remains a place people live rather than only a set of monuments. Cruise ships dock at its southern edge.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© Moebiusuibeom-en · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Puerto Rico Museum of Art

   The island's main art museum, opened in 2000 in a 1920s hospital building with a new wing behind, holding eighteen galleries of Puerto Rican art from the colonial portraitists to the present. Its garden and Campeche's eighteenth-century paintings are the strengths.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Jorge Láscar · CC BY 2.0

   Plaza Colón

   A square at the eastern end of the old city, where the Santiago gate and the landward wall once stood, with a bronze Columbus on a column put up for the four hundredth anniversary in 1893. The Tapia theatre of 1832 faces it.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© Fuzheado · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Plaza de Armas de San Juan

   The main square of the old city, laid out as a parade ground where the garrison drilled, and now shaded by trees with the city hall on one side. Four nineteenth-century statues of the seasons stand round the fountain.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Jaro Nemčok · CC BY-SA 3.0

   El Cañuelo

   The smallest of the San Juan forts, on an island across the bay entrance, built so that its guns and El Morro's crossed over the channel. It is a plain square of masonry and is reached through a beach park at Isla de Cabras.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8

   Puerto Rico National Cemetery

   A United States national cemetery at Bayamón, holding Puerto Ricans who served in the American forces — the island has provided soldiers for every war since 1898 while its residents cannot vote for the president who commands them.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9© Yarfpr · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sabana Seca

   A barrio in Toa Baja with over fifty thousand residents, long dominated by a United States naval security station that listened across the Caribbean. The base closed and the land has been slowly redeveloped since.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© https://www.flickr.com/people/runneralan/ · CC BY 2.0

    San Juan Botanical Garden

    The university botanical garden, some hundred and twenty hectares of orchid, palm and bamboo collections on the edge of the city, and the largest green space near central San Juan. Paths run through second-growth forest and it is free.

    TiqetsKlook