Mayagüez sits on Puerto Rico's west coast, the largest city on that side of the island and the unofficial capital of the region known as Porta del Sol. It is a university town, a port town, and historically the heart of Puerto Rico's coffee and rum trade. Locals call it the Sultana del Oeste — the Sultana of the West — and they are not modest about its place in the island's culture.
The downtown, rebuilt after a fire and a major 1918 earthquake, is one of the most architecturally interesting in Puerto Rico. The centrepiece is Plaza Colón, ringed by sixteen bronze statues and presided over by Christopher Columbus himself. Around it stand the city hall, the white-and-gold cathedral, and the magnificent Teatro Yagüez, an early-twentieth-century opera house painted bright peach with a Beaux-Arts dome.
The University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez campus (always called el Colegio) is the island's engineering and agricultural school and gives the city its student energy. Just north of campus, the Tropical Agricultural Research Station maintains one of the most important tropical botanical collections in the Americas — bamboos, palms, fruit trees from across the equator, mostly free to wander.
Beyond architecture and gardens, Mayagüez has the Juan A. Rivero Zoo, the only zoo in Puerto Rico; the original India brewery, which has been making Medalla Light since 1937; and a couple of working markets where the local brazo gitano — a sponge-cake jelly roll said to have been invented here in 1888 by Franco's bakery — is still the city's signature treat. The west-coast beach scene is a short drive away: surf at Rincón, the bioluminescent bay at La Parguera, the salt flats and cliffs of Cabo Rojo.
Mayagüez is not pretty in the postcard sense. Hurricane María and the 2019–2020 earthquake swarm hit hard, and many downtown buildings are still being repaired. But the bones are excellent, the food is some of the best on the island, and a day or two here is well spent.