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Ponce
Sign in to saveAlso known as Ponce, Puerto Rico, La Perla del Sur, La Ciudad Señorial, La Ciudad de las Quenepas, The Pearl of the South, The Manorial City, Genip City, Autonomous Municipality of Ponce
city and municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico
Key facts
- Sovereign state
- United States
- Commonwealth
- Puerto Rico
- Settled
- c. 1500 BC (Non-Europeans)
- Re settled
- 1582 (Europeans)
- Sitio
- 1646 ( Dispersed settlement )
- Partido
- 1670 ( Hamlet )
- Founded
- August 12, 1692 ( Village )
- Villa
- July 29, 1848
- Ciudad
- August 13, 1877
- Named after
- Juan Ponce de Leon y Loayza
- Type
- Mayor–council
- Mayor
- Marlese Sifre ( PPD )
- Council
- Asamblea Municipal de Ponce
- City and municipality
- 193.6 sq mi (501 km )
- Land
- 114.8 sq mi (297 km )
- Water
- 78.8 sq mi (204 km )
- Elevation
- 52 ft (16 m)
- Estimate 2025
- 128,384
via Wikipedia infobox
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Ponce ( US: /ˈpɔːnseɪ, ˈpoʊn-/ PAWN-say, POHN-, UK: /ˈpɒn-/ PON-, Spanish: [ˈponse] ) is a city and a municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The most populated city outside the San Juan metropolitan area, Ponce was founded on August 12, 1692 and is named after Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the great-grandson of Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León. Ponce is often referred to as La Perla del Sur (The Pearl of the South), La Ciudad Señorial (The Manorial City), and La Ciudad de las Quenepas (Genip City).
The city serves as the governmental seat of the autonomous municipality as well as the regional hub for various government of Puerto Rico entities, such as the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. It is also the regional center for various U.S. federal government agencies. Ponce is a principal city of both the Ponce Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Ponce-Yauco-Coamo Combined Statistical Area with, as of the 2020 US Census, a population of 278,477 and 333,426 respectively.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ponce” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.