Granada Nicaragua, Nicknamed 'the Great Sultan, ' in honor of its Moorish namesake across the Atlantic, Granada was founded in 1524 by Francisco Fernández de Córdoba, and is the oldest city in the New World. A trade center almost from its inception, Granada's position as the mistress of Lago de Nicaragua became even more important when the Spanish realized, in the 1530s, that the Rio San Juan was navigable from the lake to the sea. This made Granada rich - and vulnerable. Between 1665 and 1670, pirates sacked the city three times, and that was only the worst of it. Tensions erupted into full-blown civil war in the 1850s, when desperate Leon contracted the services of American mercenary William Walker and his band of 'filibusterers.' Armed and funded by the burgeoning Confederate States of America. Fortunately spared the worst of both the revolution and the Contra War, Granada's beauty and location are once again showing thru and attracting world travelers, business and expats to this wondrous colonial city. Granada, Nicaragua is where my wife Marti and I now call home.