It sneaks up on you in this city, its old, violent, mysterious, and not a little bit romantic origins. So much of the city feels new – not new in shiny, chrome, Big Apple, modern architecture way, but new in a more homespun, necessary way – the humidity and susceptibility to serious weather mean that heavy structures don’t last long without major and constant renovations.

Along the coasts here (or at least the coasts that do not boast big resorts) you see these small shacks – structures that are really just boxes made of wooden planks covered with sheets of plastic or metal. I always find myself, sitting on a bus watching them skip by through the window, thinking about how when a storm comes through, these flimsy houses, sitting right on the beach like that, must just get washed out to sea or scattered among the lines of palms standing against their back walls. Obviously economic factors are key here - these are cheap, perhaps free, building materials, and most anyone can put together a structure like that, with a minimum of effort and difficulty. But I also have come to wonder if there isn’t a part of it that is that yes, storms destroy the houses, but having a house that is easy to rebuild makes more sense than having one that is difficult to rebuild, given the fact of living so close to the edge of the sea, living so much more in direct contact with the basic precariousness of our situation on earth. A brick and mortar house, perched on sandy soil at the edge of ocean will be splintered and washed away by the storms that rage over this island, just as a wooden hut will, their “order” giving way to the infinitely more powerful and inevitable chaos of the sea.

And although Santo Domingo does not sit on the sand, it is most definitely perched right at the edge of the ocean. I live on the very edge of the ocean. Did you know that? I have to admit, that this city is so dense, so very intense and loud and consuming that I very often forget this fact, living all of two blocks away from lapping waves. I often find myself walking or driving down to the Malecon, and when I hit that street, and suddenly the buildings give way to palms and then suddenly, ocean as far as the eye can see, I am habitually surprised. Ocean! Did you know?!

So even without the precariousness of the sand, and even though so much of the city is not directly next to the water since it extends for many miles away from the Malecon in all directions, the weather does not allow much to stand for long. Which means that much is new here, belying the age and complexity of this city and its history. In the Zona Colonial however, driving in a taxi around a dark corner or strolling on a Sunday afternoon with frozen yogurt in hand, these centenarians appear, and instead of being consumed, as you were a minute earlier, with the thoughts of the date you are late for or the absolute deliciousness of the pineapple, raspberry, and blackberry combination you chose for your frozen yogurt mix, you suddenly see Columbus and priests and many Spaniards, here to terminate who knows how many years of indigenous order and fit the Old World arrangement into the New, like a little child, determined to make a square peg fit into a round hole.

The grand Basílica which takes up one side of the main park in the Zona, the Parque Colón, is perhaps chief of these buildings. It is the oldest such building in the New World, and was intended to be the religious center of the West Indies and the base for converting all of the indigenous people of the Americas. A pretty intense purpose for one stone and mortar building, no? This building somehow manages to live up to its history however, in a way that not that many buildings in my experience do. It is intense and brooding, and watches the square and the all the merriment happening within it with a forbidding eye.

I see one of its cupolas peeking up over the skyline from streets away and am suddenly reminded of its presence. I suddenly find myself strolling along one of lengthy sides and suddenly am located in a city where I hardly ever know where I am. It sneaks up on me, in places where I least expect to see it, and silently states its deep, dark, romantic purpose. Spaniards, streaming over the sides of ships, causing havoc which reverberates into the present day.