Fuente de los Canos de San Francisco - St. Augustine, FL
N 29° 53.909 W 081° 18.864
17R E 469645 N 3307578
This fountain of many spouts is located on the grounds of the St. Augustine/St. Johns County Visitor Information Center in St. Augustine, Florida, USA.
Waymark Code: WM2Q24
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 12/04/2007
Views: 76
A sign at the fountain reads as follows:
Fuente de los Canos de San Francisco
The set of masks that decorate this fountain was a gift to the City of St. Augustine by its sister city in Spain, the City of Aviles, birthplace of Pedro Menendez, founder of St. Augustine in 1565.
Presented in 2005 to the people of St. Augustine by the Mayor of Aviles, the Hon. Santiago Rodriguez Vega, the masks form part of the historic and cultural monuments that occupy the grounds of the Visitor Information Center.
The masks are reproductions of the six faces that serve as water spouts for the municipal fountain or canos in the San Francisco neighborhood of Aviles. Constructed in the late sixteenth century as part of a public works project channeling water to Aviles, the Canos de San Francisco is one of that city's most renowned historic landmarks.
Since the early twentieth century, St. Augustine and Aviles have maintained close ties, exchanging gifts and visits by citizens, public officials and students. In the 1920s, Aviles gave St. Augustine the casket and burial headboard of Pedro Menendez and in 1972 a statue of the founder, which since then has stood before the front entrance to City Hall. In 1997, St. Augustine donated the anchor of the seventeenth century Spanish treasure ship, Nuestra Senora de Atocha, to the Anchor Museum Philippe Cousteau, on the Asturian coast near Aviles.