The Fort of San Diego: 250 Years of Pacific Trade

Star-shaped stone walls on a hill above the Zócalo. Rebuilt 1616. For 250 years the Manila Galleon connected Acapulco to the Philippines — Mexican silver going east, Chinese silk, spices, porcelain coming back. The fort protected the treasure.

The Museo Histórico inside traces pre-Columbian inhabitants, the Spanish conquest, the galleon trade, Independence, and the 1950s Golden Age when Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor made this the most glamorous destination in the Americas. The galleon trade galleries have navigational instruments, trade goods, and the quiet audacity of a 4-to-6-month Pacific crossing in a wooden ship with no GPS.

Walking the ramparts, you look down at the same harbor the galleons entered. The Galleon Room in the lower level has a detailed ship model showing cargo holds and living quarters. The silk upstairs and the porcelain in the ceramics display crossed 9,000 miles of open ocean. That enterprise — and the labor behind it — is the foundation Acapulco was built on.