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If you have the time, a few sights outside Ponce's historic district warrant a visit - in particular, the Museo del Arte de Ponce , just south of the centre at 2325 Avda Las Americas (daily 10am-5pm; US$4, children US$2, students US$1; tel 787/848-0505), held to be the best in the Caribbean. With about 850 paintings and 800 sculptures, the collection is strong on Pre-Raphaelite and Italian Baroque work and includes pieces by Velazquez, Lord Leighton, Rubens, Delacroix, Benjamin West and Puerto Rico's two most esteemed masters - Jose Campeche and Francisco Oller. Just northwest of town, sharing a hill with the 100-foot-tall, 70-foot-wide cross of El Vigia , from which the Spanish kept watch over the waters around the port of Ponce, is the Museo Castillo Serralles (daily except Mon 9.30am-5pm; US$3; tel 787/259-1774;). It's hard to believe that this 14,000-square-foot, Spanish Revival mansion was built during the Great Depression. Home to the Seralles family, the manufacturers of Don Q rum, the estate is an exercise in excess, now worth about US$25 million. It took four years to build and passed through several generations of the family until the mid-1980s. Details were so carefully preserved it looks as though the house was occupied just yesterday. About two miles north of Ponce, at km 2.2 on Highway 503, Tibes Indian Ceremonial Park (daily except Mon 9am-4pm; US$2; tel 787/840-2255) was uncovered in 1975, when floodwaters from Hurricane Eloise retreated from the area. Excavation teams found 186 graves from 300 AD, pre-Taino bateys (courts used for ceremonial ball games), tools, pottery and a star-shaped stone formation with points facing the direction of sunrise and sunset during the solstice and equinox. Much of what was discovered can be viewed by the public, along with a re-created Indian village. Visitors to the accurately restored Hacienda Buena Vista (by appointment; US$5; tel 787/722-5882), about ten miles north of town, at km 16.8 on Highway 123, can get a glimpse of what life was like on a nineteenth-century coffee plantation. In its heyday, the hacienda used slave labour to grow cacao, plantains, pineapple, yams and corn in addition to coffee, and was one of the first on the island to use industrial machinery, such as the corn mill, cotton gin and coffee de-pulper.
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