León, Nicaragua

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Cathedral of San Pedro, c. 1905

León is a city in Nicaragua, Central America. In full the legal name of the city, granted in Spanish Colonial times, is Santiago de los Caballeros de León, but this is little used. It is the capital and municipality of Nicaragua's León department. As of 2005 the city had an estimated population of about 145,000 people.

León is situated on the Río Chiquito (Chiquito River), some 50 miles northwest of Managua, and some 11 miles north of the Pacific Ocean coast. Although less populous than Managua, León has long been the intellectual center of the nation, with the university founded here in 1813. León is also an important industrial and commercial center for Nicaragua.

[edit] History

The first city of León in Nicaragua was established in 1524 by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba about 20 miles east of the present site. After the 1610 eruption of the Momotombo volcano, located only a couple miles away, caused extensive damage, the inhabitants of this old León decided to move to another location to prevent the loss of life and property again to an eruption. This new site had been a Native American town named Subtiava. The ruins of the abandoned city were excavated in 1960 and placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in the year 2000.

León has fine examples of Spanish Colonial architecture, including the grand Cathedral of the Assumption, built from 1706 to 1740, with two towers added in 1746 and 1779.

View of León from "el Fortin Sandinista", October 2002

When Nicaragua withdrew from the United Provinces of Central America in 1839, León became the capital of the new nation of Nicaragua. For some years the capital shifted back and forth between León and Granada, Nicaragua, with Liberal regimes preferring León and Conservative ones Granada, until as a compromise Managua was agreed upon to be the permanent capital in 1858.

In 1950 the city of León had a population of 31,000 people. Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza García was shot and mortally wounded in the city on September 21, 1956.

The building of El museo de tradiciones y leyendas was once the infamous XXI jail before the 1979 revolution. There are also several political murals around the city.