The Colors of Old San Juan: A Visual Essay
By Miguel Ángel Cruz | October 2024 | 8 min read
Walk through Old San Juan on any afternoon, and you’ll understand why painters, photographers, and filmmakers have been drawn here for generations. The colors aren’t merely decorative—they tell stories of empire, resistance, survival, and reinvention across five centuries.
A City Built in Color
The Spanish colonial buildings of Old San Juan weren’t always the rainbow they are today. In the sixteenth century, most structures were finished in the pale stucco typical of Mediterranean construction—whites and creams that reflected the brutal Caribbean sun.
Color came gradually. By the nineteenth century, prosperous merchants began painting their homes in distinctive hues—partly for aesthetic pleasure, partly for practical identification in an era before street numbering. Each color carried meaning: blue to ward off evil spirits, pink for good fortune, yellow for prosperity.
Today’s Old San Juan is a palimpsest of these traditions, with colors that have evolved through centuries of repainting, weathering, and renewal.
The Palette
Cobalt Blue (Azul Cobalto)
The most iconic color of Old San Juan. This deep, saturated blue appears on window frames, doors, and entire building facades. Originally derived from cobalt-based pigments imported from Europe, the color was believed to keep mosquitoes away and protect against mal de ojo (evil eye). Today, it remains the signature color of the historic district.
Coral Pink (Rosa Coral)
A warm, sunset pink that softens the Caribbean light. Particularly prevalent along Calle Fortaleza and the streets near the governor’s mansion. The pigment historically came from crushed shells and coral mixed with lime—a technique borrowed from indigenous building traditions.
Saffron Yellow (Amarillo Azafrán)
The golden yellow of prosperity and optimism. Often found on commercial buildings and the grander residential structures. This color reads differently throughout the day—pale in morning light, brilliant at noon, warm amber at sunset.
Sea Green (Verde Mar)
A muted, weathered green that evokes the ocean visible from nearly every street in Old San Juan. This color appears frequently on shutters and ironwork, creating contrast against warmer wall colors.
Terracotta (Terracota)
The earthy red-orange of roof tiles and accent details. This color connects Old San Juan to its Mediterranean ancestry—similar hues appear in Seville, Barcelona, and the coastal towns of southern Spain.
Photography and Color
Local photographers have long been obsessed with Old San Juan’s chromatic possibilities. The narrow streets, with their consistent colonial architecture, create natural color studies—each block a careful arrangement of complementary and contrasting hues.
Jack Delano, the American photographer who made Puerto Rico his home, captured the district’s colors in groundbreaking Kodachrome work during the 1940s and 50s. His images, many made for the Farm Security Administration, revealed a city that seemed to glow from within.
Contemporary photographers continue this tradition. Héctor Méndez Caratini has documented the interplay of color and shadow across decades, while Christopher Gregory Rivera uses vibrant street photography to explore how color shapes urban identity.
Artists and Inspiration
The colors of Old San Juan have inspired generations of painters.
Francisco Oller (1833-1917), Puerto Rico’s greatest nineteenth-century painter, incorporated the district’s palette into his landscapes and portraits. His technique of capturing Caribbean light—softer and more diffuse than European illumination—established a visual vocabulary that persists today.
Myrna Báez (1931-2018) made the colored buildings of Old San Juan a recurring subject. Her paintings of windows, doorways, and interior spaces explore how color creates atmosphere and emotion. In her work, a blue wall isn’t just blue—it’s memory, longing, the particular quality of island light at four in the afternoon.
Contemporary artist Charles Juhasz-Alvarado creates large-scale paintings that abstract the district’s colors into geometric compositions. His work suggests that Old San Juan’s palette has become a kind of visual language, immediately recognizable even when freed from architectural context.
Preservation and Change
The colors of Old San Juan are protected by strict preservation codes. Property owners cannot repaint their buildings in just any color—choices must be approved by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña to maintain the district’s historic character.
This creates interesting tensions. As buildings are renovated for tourism, some argue that colors have become more saturated, more “Instagram-ready” than historically accurate. Others counter that the district has always evolved, and that today’s vibrant palette is simply the latest chapter in a long chromatic history.
What’s clear is that color remains central to Old San Juan’s identity. Walk these streets at golden hour, when the setting sun turns every facade into a painting, and you’ll understand why so many artists have tried—and keep trying—to capture what they see.
Visiting
Old San Juan is best photographed in early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is low and shadows are long. The streets around Calle San Sebastián and Calle Cristo offer particularly rich color combinations. For interior colors, visit the Casa Blanca museum or the many galleries along Calle Cristo and Calle San José.
Miguel Ángel Cruz is a San Juan-based photographer and writer. His work has appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Architectural Digest, and numerous exhibitions.