Explore Nicaragua

In 1502 Christopher Columbus was the first European known to have reached what is now Nicaragua as he sailed south along the Central America isthmus. On his fourth voyage Columbus sailed alongside and explored the Mosquito Coast on the east of Nicaragua. However, it was not until 1524, that Conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba founded the first Spanish permanent settlements, including two of Nicaragua's principal towns: Granada on Lake Nicaragua, León east of Lake Managua and also Nueva Segovia in Nicaragua's north. Settled as a colony of Spain within the kingdom of Guatemala in the 1520s, Nicaragua became a part of the Mexican Empire and then gained its independence as a part of the United Provinces of Central America in 1821 and as an independent republic in its own right in 1838.

Colonial arquitecture of the city of Granada, NicaraguaThe Mosquito Coast based on Bluefields on the Atlantic was claimed by the United Kingdom and its predecessors as a protectorate from 1655 to 1850; this was delegated to Honduras in 1859 and transferred to Nicaragua in 1860, though it remained autonomous until 1894. Jose Santos Zelaya managed to negotiate with the British Queen , Queen Victoria, for the annexation of this region to the rest of Nicaragua. In his honour the entire region was named Zelaya, though this was later changed under the Sandinista government and it was divided into two autonomous regions.