Santiago Province

Santiago is a province which currently comprises one of the 32 provinces of the Dominican Republic. It is divided into 10 municipalities and its capital city is Santiago de los Caballeros. Located in north-central Dominican Republic, in the Cibao region, it is bordered by the provinces of Valverde to the north-west, Puerto Plata to the north, Espaillat and La Vega to the east, San Juan to the south and Santiago Rodríguez to the west. It is home to an intellectual, educational, and cultural center. It is also a major industrial center with rum, textile, cigarette and cigar industries based there. Shoe manufacturing, leather goods, and furniture making are important parts of the province's economic life. Santiago also has major Free Zone centers with four important industrial free zones; it also has an important cement factory. Santiago is home to one of the largest medical centers in the country, Clínica Unión Médica, which serves all 14 provinces of El Cibao. Also within striking distance there are a good number of pleasant towns, many of which are quite prosperous. It is surrounded by tall mountains that have for years protected it from hurricanes and allows for dense tropical forests to develop on the slopes of such mountains, which are among the highest in the region. Geography Santiago province is located in a valley within the Northern Cordillera that crosses the entire north of the country and also is the Diego de Ocampo peak of 1,249 meters above sea level. To the west are numerous hills that separate the Western Valley of the Cibao with the Valley of the Vega Real. The highest mountains in the province are La Pelona, La Rusilla that it shares with La Vega, and Pico Duarte that it shares with the province of San Juan, the latter is the tallest mountain in the Caribbean region.