San Juan de Ulúa

San Juan de Ulúa is the fortress on a former reef island facing the old centre of Veracruz, now joined to the mainland by the port's docks. It is a complex of walls, bastions, a former prison and a former presidential residence, built mostly of local coral stone in the Italian style of fortification, and it has been run by the national institute of anthropology and history (INAH) as a museum since the late 20th century. Juan de Grijalva's expedition reached the island in 1518 and added "San Juan" to its native name, Ulúa, and Hernán Cortés landed opposite it in April 1519 to found Veracruz.

The island first served as a sheltered anchorage for the galleons, protected by the reefs, and the first fortifications were begun around 1535. In September 1568 a Spanish fleet trapped the English ships of John Hawkins and a young Francis Drake here, and in the 1580s the engineer Battista Antonelli redesigned the defences; work and enlargements went on into the 18th century, and in 1793–1796 the San José lighthouse, said to be the first modern lighthouse in Spanish America, was installed on the San Pedro bastion. After independence Spanish troops held out in the fort until November 1825, the last Spanish stronghold in Mexico. It was bombarded by the French in 1838 and taken by US forces in 1847 and again in 1914. For much of the 19th century and up to 1915 it was a prison, especially for political prisoners: Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and Benito Juárez were held here, as was the famous bandit Jesús Arriaga, "Chucho el Roto". From 1882 it also housed a naval arsenal and shipyard, and in 1915 Venustiano Carranza briefly made it the seat of his government. The shipyard was dismantled in 1962 and the site handed to INAH.

Visitors walk the walls, the cannon-lined bastions and the narrow stone passageways, with views back over the port and the cranes of the docks. The most popular part is the old prison, where narrow passages lead to dark, hot cells whose walls are up to several metres thick; the worst were nicknamed "Heaven", "Purgatory" and "Hell", and the best-known legend is that of the Mulata de Córdoba, who escaped the Inquisition by painting a ship on her cell wall. The San Crispín bastion is still used by the Mexican Navy and closed to visitors. The fort stood in for Cartagena in the 1984 film Romancing the Stone.