Most visitors walk the same handful of colonial streets and stop there. Two other routes reward the extra hour: a mural-painted barrio north of the tourist grid, and a stroll built around what’s on the plate rather than what’s on the plaque. Barrio Santa Bárbara’s murals Just north of the central colonial grid, beneath the hillside church of Santa Bárbara where independence leader Juan Pablo Duarte was baptized, sits a working-class neighborhood transformed by the annual Hoy Santa Bárbara arts festival into an open-air gallery of large, colorful murals from local and international artists.

The best group activity in Santo Domingo costs nothing, needs no reservation, and happens on exactly one night of the week. Sunday night at Ruinas de San Francisco From 5:00 to 10:00 PM every Sunday, the orchestra Grupo Bonyé plays son, salsa, merengue and bachata at the foot of the floodlit 16th-century monastery ruins, free and unticketed. Groups pull up folding chairs, buy cold Presidente beer from a nearby colmado, and dance on the cobblestones alongside hundreds of locals.

The cobblestones that make the Zona Colonial photogenic are the same ones that shred a lightweight stroller’s wheels in an afternoon, which is the first thing worth knowing before planning a family day here. Museo Infantil Trampolín Inside the 16th-century Casa de Bastidas on Calle Las Damas, Trampolín runs nine hands-on rooms for ages 4 to 12 covering the solar system, human anatomy, dinosaur paleontology and Dominican ecology, wrapped around a shaded colonial courtyard.