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Stretching several miles eastwards from the port, the Malecón also known as Avenida George Washington, is the city’s breezy seafront boulevard, lined with high-rise hotels, restaurants, and bars.

Next to the Zona Colonial, this low-level neighborhood of narrow streets and plazas contains fine examples of 19th-century architecture and maintains the atmosphere of a traditional barrio .

The old town’s main shopping street, the pedestrian-only thoroughfare is lined by stores and offices. The street is renowned for jewelers and shoe shops, and also for Dominican music and Haitian art.

A leafy middle-class suburb dating from the 1930s, Gazcue’s eccentric mix of buildings includes imitation chalets and half-timbered English-style architecture and a number of cafés and galleries.

Part of the Modernist 1970s Plaza de la Cultura complex, this collection of artifacts reveals the day-to-day life and rituals of the pre-Columbian Taino people.

Although the presidential palace looks impregnable, you can visit this 1940s exercise in NeoClassical pomp, with its mahogany furniture and hall of mirrors. It houses government departments.

An austere Neo-Classical façade announces the aesthetic credentials of the city’s Beaux-Arts headquarters. Decorating the stairway are murals by José Vela Zanetti.

In the northern suburb of Arroyo Hondo, the 450-acre garden showcases the tropical wealth of the country’s flora, featuring palms, a Japanese garden, and 300 varieties of orchid.

A haven for joggers and walkers, this park is set in the affluent diplomatic district. The limestone cliffs on the northern edge contain a series of caves, one of which houses a restaurant and another the vast Guácara Taína nightclub.

Inaugurated in 1992 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival, this marble-clad monument attracted fierce criticism as a tasteless waste of money. But the sheer scale of the cross-shaped edifice is impressive.