Margarita’s capital, La Asunción, is the colonial-era heart of the island, with streets lined in typical one-story, brightly painted houses from the period. The town, which has a population of roughly 10,000, was founded in the 1560s to protect the island’s residents from pirate raids along the coast. It wasn’t long, however, until the pirates made their way inland, which led to the construction of the stone Santa Rosa castle. At the center of town, on Plaza Bolívar, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption is the oldest existing church in the country, dating to the early 1600s.
