The story
Fiestas Patronales Santo Domingo de Guzman in Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo, the national capital, honors its own namesake patron, Santo Domingo de Guzman, on August 8, a feast tied symbolically to the city's founding identity as the oldest European-established city in the Americas. The observance would center on the Colonial Zone's Catedral Primada de America, the Americas' first cathedral.
The Dominican capital takes its name directly from Saint Dominic, or Santo Domingo de Guzman, the thirteenth-century Spanish founder of the Dominican Order of Preachers, whose fixed Catholic feast day falls on August 8.