The Fortress: San Cristóbal in San Juan

Information & Pictures about my visit to the Fort San Cristóbal in Old San Juan

I went on this field trip to the Fort San Cristóbal on April 15, 1998 in Old San Juan. The trip was pretty good, no traffic jams or anything like that. It's only an hour and a half drive from where I live.

Here is some information about the Fort San Cristóbal before you start looking at the pictures.

In Puerto Rico there are two forts: El Morro and San Cristóbal.

So, since I haven't gone to El Morro I can't tell you any information about it so I'll just have to talk (not exactly talk buy type out the history) about San Cristóbal. =)

Unlike El Morro, whose main job was to prevent enemy ships from entering the harbor, San Cristóbal protected the land approaches to San Juan from the east. This massive fortification was first tested in battle in 1797, when Sir Ralph Abercromby's 7,000 British troops unsuccessfully attacked the city. A hundred years later, in 1898, Spanish troops fired the first shot of the Spanish-American War in Puerto Rico from one of San Cristóbals gun batteries that faced north toward the Atlantic.

The need to protect the land approaches to San Juan was first shown when the Earl of Cumberland's English troops swept through the city in 1598 on their way to El Morro. The Dutch attack of 1625 confirmed the need. In 1634 San Cristóbal was begun as a small triangular-shaped redoubt. As many as 400 men a day- some daylaborers, some convicts, some soldiers of the Toledo Regiment, and some slaves- worked feverishly to enclose all of San Juan behind a fortified wall.

By the time it was completed in the mid-1780s, San Cristóbal had grown into a network of interdependant fortifications covering about 27 acres of land. It remains a spectacular example of the "defense-in-depth" principle. Defense-in-depth means, simply, that each part of a fort is supported by one or more other parts. If a fort has a single barrier and the enemy breaks through it, he has broken its defense. But if a fort has several barriers, each higher and stronger than the one in front of it, and an attacker captures one of them, he can still be driven out by fire from the barriers behind it.

So, as you can see this is fort is an uncapturable fort. These engineers when they built this fort knew all the tricks in the books incase there was an attack they knew that there was no way they could destroy the whole fort.

The fort has 3 levels this is the first level and the entrance to the fort.

This is the first level. You can see in the far distance 8 cannons that were used to attack ships in the sea.

This picture was taken on the third level. In the far distance you can see El Morro. From where this picture was taken to El Morro there is a one mile distance. As you can see in that one mile distance that there was protection in between.

This picture was taken from the third level looking over the center of the fort.

Same picture as above except from a different angle. This is what's on the left from the picture above.

A lookout tower from the third level.