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The laid-back second city is different in ambience from bustling Santo Domingo. Its streets are filled with monuments to its past glories as a tobacco boom town.

The historic jewel in the capital’s crown, this district of restored colonial buildings and shady plazas is filled with well-preserved reminders of a bygone age.

The modern metropolis encompasses crowded downtown streets, charming suburbs, and relaxing parks, where art galleries rub shoulders with US-style shopping malls .

Only two hours from the capital, the rugged interior is a walker’s paradise of green meadows and clear rivers, surrounded by pine forests and mountains. Pico Duarte, the highest mountain in the Caribbean, lies here.

Steeped in colonial history, the North Coast port is also the hub for the area’s thriving tourist complexes, offering a great combination of sightseeing and entertainment. Tourist attractions include the San Felipe Fortress, La Glorieta, and Museo del Ambar.

The place where European colonization of the Americas really began, the beautiful bay reveals the story of Columbus’s first settlement. Other highlights include some wonderful beaches such as Playa Isabela and Punta Rucia Beach.

One of the coolest spots in the country, a once-tiny fishing village surrounded by idyllic beaches has become a magnet for independent travelers and sun-seekers.

The modern face of Dominican tourism, this long and idyllic coastline of white sand and swaying palms is home to a cluster of all-inclusive resorts. It’s a paradise for windsurfers and surfers alike.

A town built on sugar now offers a different sweetness in the form of the country’s most luxurious resort, Casa de Campo, and an unforgettable transplant from Italy, Altos de Chavón.

An inland saltwater sea surrounded by cactus-studded wilderness, this natural wonder involves a boat trip and close encounters with crocodiles and tame giant iguanas.

Local dishes such as mofongo , and international cuisine, in an attractive setting by the sea.

The golden resin makes beautiful jewelry, but before buying make sure that the piece is authentic.

Big tourist resorts such as Bávaro and Bayahibe often allow small traders to set up informal markets. These are places to find genuine bargains away from the overpriced malls. Look out for rum, music, cheap Haitian art and fabrics.

Santo Domingo’s traffic-free central shopping street is the place for merengue or bachata CDs, cigars or cheap T-shirts, and other bargains. The surrounding side streets are also worth exploring for the many gift and souvenir shops.

The long, straight street of this commercial center cuts through downtown, lined with old-fashioned department stores, banks, and street stalls. You’ll find almost everything including “designer” sunglasses from Haiti.

This technically impressive installation uses natural seawater to fill its various tanks, displaying an enormous and colorful range of tropical marine life. The pride of this place is Tamaury, an orphaned manatee, which was saved in 1995 after its mother was killed and now basks, apparently quite happily, in a large tank. A pleasant snack bar looks over the sea (see Acuario Nacional, Santo Domingo).

Flanking the Caribbean Sea, the aquarium features a large plastic tunnel in which spectators are surrounded by water, sharks, rays, and conger eels. Colorful shoals of fish swarm around the tunnel, while exhibits explain different sorts of marine environments. The most popular family attraction, though, is an orphaned manatee.

This theme park has everything for swimmers and water-lovers, including 12 slides and pools of varying depth. There is ample shade, and refreshments are available. Weekends are extremely popular with local families.

Swelteringly hot in the plains between sea and mountains, Azua de Compostela looks like an ordinary Dominican town, but it is one of the New World’s oldest cities. It was founded in 1504 by Diego de Valásquez, who went on to conquer Cuba. The old colonial settlement was ravaged by war and earthquakes, and the town was rebuilt away from the sea. There are some pretty painted wooden houses at a distance from the main road, but most visitors and locals prefer to head for the Playa Monte Río, a quiet and undeveloped beach with fabulous views over the Bahía de Ocoa and surrounding mountains.

Set among flat sugarcane-producing land, Baní is an industrious place, its relative wealth due to nearby coffee plantations, salt mining, and commerce. It is also renowned nationally for its particularly delicious mangoes, in season from May to July. Its most famous son is Máximo Gómez (see The Northwest), who with José Martí was the foremost champion of Cuban independence. His house, now containing a small museum, can be reached on foot from the pleasant Parque Central. Also worth a look is Baní’s local beach, Los Almendros, with rough sand but with restaurants and plenty of atmosphere at weekends.

The biggest town in the region, the port of Barahona is the gateway to the South-west’s natural attractions. A broad seaside boulevard runs the length of the town, and the narrow streets around the Parque Central have some nice old buildings. The advent of an international airport in the 1990s encouraged some tourist development, including a beach-side resort in the town itself. But few visitors confine themselves to Barahona, preferring to explore the coastline to the south and the two nearby national parks.

Until the 1990s this was a quiet fishing village, with nothing much more than a few boats pulled up on the beach. But a wave of tourist development has changed its character, bringing more amenities and many more visitors. Even so, the pastel-colored wooden huts and gracious palm trees that line the beach still form a pretty scene, while the jetty is the starting point for boat trips to the offshore Isla Saona and Isla Catalina. Bayahibe is also well endowed with eating and drinking spots.

Until the 1990s this was a quiet fishing village, with nothing much more than a few boats pulled up on the beach. But a wave of tourist development has changed its character, bringing more amenities and many more visitors. Even so, the pastel-colored wooden huts and gracious palm trees that line the beach still form a pretty scene, while the jetty is the starting point for boat trips to the offshore Isla Saona and Isla Catalina. Bayahibe is also well endowed with eating and drinking spots.

The easiest beach to reach from Santo Domingo is a boisterous and unpretentious place, verging on the raucous at weekends when tens of thousands of people escape from the capital to swim and listen to music. During the week it’s a lot quieter, but even then there’s no shortage of bars and restaurants. There are a number of hotels and guesthouses, too, offering good-value accommodation. The main draw is the beach (see Boca Chica Beach), a lovely strip of sand set in a protective bay with clear water.

The southeast tip of the country is everyone’s idea of a desert island idyll – a sweeping panorama of soft sand and gently swaying palm trees facing a turquoise sea. Mass tourism may have brought many thousands of visitors each year to the complexes of Punta Cana and Bávaro, but even the arrival of all-inclusive hotels has done little to affect the majesty of this coastline.

This long strip of hotels and guesthouses set on the coast is not really a town as such, but an extended tourist enclave. Dating from the 1980s, when investors saw the potential of a new resort on the South Coast, it features mostly modern architecture and well-designed hotels. Most of the action revolves around the beaches, which range from the fairly rocky to the sublimely sandy. The latter are normally situated by the larger all-inclusive hotels, where different water sports are on offer.

La Capital has something for everyone, whether cobbled colonial-era streets steeped in history or state-of-the-art shopping malls. A patchwork of ancient and modern, the sprawling city lives life at a frantic pace, with gridlocked streets and other urban challenges. But there are quiet corners and shady plazas in the Zona Colonial, extensive parks offering fresh air, peace, and quiet, and the magnificent seaside Malecón, the favorite playground of Santo Domingo’s inhabitants (see Santo Domingo: The Zona Colonial).

The squat, fortified stone house, built in 1505, belonged to Ponce de León, founder of Puerto Rico and Florida.

The sprawling modern city is nothing special, but the basilica (see Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia, Higüey), built to replace the much older Iglesia San Dionisio, is certainly impressive.

The most popular part of Parque Nacional del Este can be easily reached by regular boat services. Despite the crowds, the island looks like a Robinson Crusoe fantasy.

The main attraction for scuba divers and snorkelers is the Hickory wreck, deliberately sunk here, as well as coral reefs which are accessible from the Park’s beach.

This sleepy one-street village is popular with Costa del Coco excursionists, largely because of its bright and photogenic wooden houses, built by immigrants from the Canary Islands.