Casa Blanca Museum

Built in 1521 as the intended residence of Juan Ponce de León, Casa Blanca outlasted its original purpose before it even began — de León died during an expedition to Florida without ever living here. His descendants occupied it for generations. Over the following centuries the building passed through Spanish military hands, then American ones after 1898, before the Puerto Rican government designated it a historical monument in 1967. Today the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture administers it as a museum of 16th- and 17th-century artifacts.