Museo de las Américas

The building came first — barracks erected between 1854 and 1864, one of the last major construction projects of Spanish colonial rule in Puerto Rico. After 1898, the federal government acquired it from the Catholic Church, and ownership disputes required resolution by the Supreme Court. The Government of Puerto Rico received the building in 1976 and restored it between 1990 and 1993. Ricardo Enrique Alegría Gallardo founded the Museo de las Américas here in 1992. Four permanent exhibitions cover indigenous America, African heritage, popular arts, and the colonial formation of Puerto Rican identity — the whole arc of what this island absorbed and became.