Portobelo
Portobelo (originally San Felipe de Portobelo , also obsolete Puerto Bello ) is a small tourist town with about 5,000 inhabitants 30 km east of the beginning of the Panama Canal near Colón on the Caribbean coast of the Central American state of Panama . During the Spanish colonial era, Portobelo was an important port protected by powerful forts. The forts were 1980 in the list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO added. Portobelo has been on the Red List of World Heritage in Danger since 2012 , the reasons for this being the slow decay of the entire complex due to inadequate conservation measures.
history
The bay on which the city is located today was discovered by Christopher Columbus on November 2nd, 1502 during his fourth voyage and described as puerto bello (Catalan: porto belo , German: beautiful harbor ). The port was already in great use before it was officially founded. One of the two lines of the Spanish silver fleet sailed from Spain every August from 1561 to this port, where the Camino Real de Castilla de Oro ended. This repeatedly attracted pirates to attack the port. In 1596, the English privateer Francis Drake died of a fever before the city was officially founded, while he was trying to conquer and plunder the port.
The city was finally founded in 1597 and named San Felipe de Portobelo in honor of King Philip II (Spain) . As early as 1601, the English pirate William Parker made an attempt to conquer the city. In July 1668, privateer Henry Morgan actually captured the city by attacking it from the land side. After robbing the residents, he extorted a sizeable ransom from the Spanish authorities in Panama City , threatening to burn the city down , before he and his men sailed away.
On November 20, 1739, in the first year of the War of Jenkins' Ear for Spanish supremacy in the West Indian region , i.e. the Caribbean, the British, led by Edward Vernon , destroyed all Spanish military installations in Portobelo and thus conquered one of the most important intermediate stations of the Spanish silver fleet .
With the construction of the railway in 1855 and later the Panama Canal over the isthmus , the city lost its economic importance and is now a small tourist destination.
Festivals
Every October 21st, Portobelo celebrates a festival in honor of the Black Christ , a figure of Jesus made of black wood.
Web links
Heritage: Portobello and San Lorenzo forts on the Caribbean coast (1980, R ) | Panama City Historic District , Salón Bolívar and Panamá Viejo Archaeological Sites (1997)
Natural heritage: Darién National Park (1981) | Talamanca Mountains and La Amistad National Park (1983) | Coiba National Park and its marine protected areas (2005)
Coordinates: 9 ° 33 ′ N , 79 ° 39 ′ W