Puerta del Conde

<p>La Puerta del Conde (The Count&#039;s Gate) was the main entrance to the fortified city of Santo Domingo (in present-day Dominican Republic), named to honor Governor Captain-General Bernardino de Meneses Bracamonte y Zapata, 1st Count of Peñalva, who during his tenure saved the city from a siege in 1655 by Englishmen General Robert Venables and Admiral William Penn amid the Third Anglo-Spanish War. The gate is part of a structure called El Baluarte del Conde (The Count&#039;s Bulwark), a fort in Ciudad Colonial, the colonial area of Santo Domingo.</p><p>The fort was part of a larger system of fortifications that ran along a defensive wall which surrounded Ciudad Colonial. The Altar of the Fatherland and Independence Park are located there.</p><p>Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, one of the Dominican Founding Fathers, proclaimed Dominican independence and raised the first Dominican Flag, on February 27, 1844.</p>