La Romana sits on the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, 110 kilometers east of Santo Domingo and 50 kilometers west of the resort strip of Bayahibe, and serves as the provincial capital of a sugar-cane region that once ran the largest sugar mill in the Caribbean. The city of about 130,000 people is anchored by the Central Romana sugar mill complex founded in 1911 by the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company, later bought by Gulf and Western and then sold to the Fanjul family. The Casa de Campo resort, built by Gulf and Western in 1974 on the coastal side of the sugar estate, became the country's most famous luxury property, home to the Teeth of the Dog championship golf course and the Altos de Chavon replica sixteenth-century village that houses a cultural foundation, arts school, amphitheatre and Regional Museum of Archaeology.
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Altos de Chavon is the region's signature cultural attraction, a stone-built village constructed by Italian designer Roberto Coppa between 1976 and 1982 using locally quarried coral limestone. The village overlooks the Chavon River gorge and includes St. Stanislaus Church, the 5,000-seat Greek-style amphitheatre that hosted Frank Sinatra, Julio Iglesias and Sting in its first decade, the Altos de Chavon School of Design affiliated with the Parsons School in New York, and the Regional Museum of Archaeology with its 3,000 artifacts from Taino pre-Columbian culture. Entry to the museum costs 150 pesos, and the village itself is free to wander between nine in the morning and nine in the evening. Shops sell Dominican-made ceramics, amber jewellery, Larimar stone pendants, cigars from the Tabacalera de Garcia factory 15 kilometers west, and hand-rolled cohibas at prices ranging from 200 pesos for a single cigar to 12,000 pesos for a cedar humidor set of 25.
The resort strip at Bayahibe and the adjacent protected reserve of Cotubanama National Park offer the most rewarding day trips from La Romana. Bayahibe is a former fishing village whose beach has been developed with five all-inclusive resorts totalling around 3,500 rooms, anchored by the Dreams La Romana Resort & Spa, Iberostar Hacienda Dominicus and Viva Wyndham Dominicus. Half-day boat trips from Bayahibe pier to Saona Island, which lies within Cotubanama National Park, include a swim at Piscina Natural sandbar where starfish congregate in waist-deep turquoise water, followed by lunch on Saona and return by catamaran via the coastal mangroves. Tour operators charge 3,500 to 4,500 pesos per adult including hotel transfer, lunch and unlimited drinks; national park entry of 300 pesos per adult is usually included.
Closer to town, the Casa de Campo marina provides a promenade of 370 slips lined with 30 restaurants, boutiques and yacht charter offices. A stroll along the boardwalk past million-dollar yachts leads to the Club Nautico restaurant, where grilled Caribbean lobster with plantain tostones costs 3,800 pesos, and to the Cafe Marietta for Dominican coffee and tres leches cake at 400 pesos. Private yacht charters to Catalina Island, a coral reef within the national park 20 kilometers southwest of Bayahibe, cost 35,000 pesos per day for up to eight passengers including captain, snorkel gear and picnic lunch. The Catalina wall dive site drops from six meters to 40 meters and hosts nurse sharks, eagle rays and healthy stands of elkhorn coral, making it a favorite for PADI certified divers visiting the southeast coast.
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Things to see & do in La Romana
Food in La Romana combines Dominican, Afro-Caribbean and Spanish influences. La Bandera, the national lunch plate of rice, red beans, stewed chicken and plantains, costs 350 pesos at casual comedors like Lola's Place on Avenida Libertad. Sancocho, a seven-meat stew with yam, plantain, yucca and corn, is served at Don Antonio Restaurant on Calle Diego Avila in the old colonial quarter for 650 pesos per bowl. Fresh seafood stars on the Casa de Campo marina: La Cana serves Caribbean red snapper stuffed with crab for 4,200 pesos, while the casual Peperoni Restaurant offers wood-fired pizza and pasta with Dominican ingredients from 1,500 pesos per main. Street food includes yaniqueques (fried dough), empanadas de platano (plantain turnovers) and fried cheese cubes called quipes, all priced around 100 to 200 pesos at the Mercado Modelo on Avenida Santa Rosa.
La Romana is served by La Romana International Airport, IATA code LRM, located 8 kilometers east of the city on Highway 3. The airport handles around 700,000 passengers per year, with direct flights from New York JFK, Miami, Toronto, Montreal, Madrid, Milan and Moscow during winter season. Charter flights intensify between November and April when European and North American tour operators deliver all-inclusive packages to Bayahibe and Casa de Campo. From LRM, private airport transfer in a sedan or minivan costs 3,500 pesos one way to Casa de Campo, 4,800 pesos to Bayahibe resorts, and 2,500 pesos to central La Romana, with drive times of 15, 35 and 10 minutes respectively. The Punta Cana Bavaro resort strip 100 kilometers northeast is reached in 90 minutes for around 9,000 pesos per transfer vehicle.
Tours & experiences
Top tours & experiences in La Romana
Browse Viator’s catalogue of La Romana tours, day trips, and experiences. Most include free cancellation up to 24 hours before the activity.
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Neighborhoods & food in La Romana
The climate follows a classic Caribbean pattern: warm and relatively dry from December through April with daytime highs of 28 to 30 degrees Celsius and pleasant sea breezes; hot and humid from May through October with temperatures climbing to 33 degrees, higher humidity and afternoon thunderstorms most days. Hurricane season officially runs June through November, though direct hits on the southeast coast are rare; most Atlantic storms pass to the north. Sea temperatures range from 26 degrees in February to 29 degrees in September, making swimming comfortable year-round. The best months for visibility diving at Catalina and Saona reefs are February through April, when plankton blooms subside. Accommodation rates peak during Easter week, Christmas-New Year, and the week around Presidents Day in the United States.
Festivals and seasonal events add character to a visit. Carnival in La Romana is celebrated on Sundays throughout February with parades down Avenida Libertad, where troupes wear masks of Lechones (hogs) painted in regional colors of red, yellow and green, and dance to merengue and bachata bands on raised platforms. The Merengue Tipico Festival in September brings accordion-led groups from the Cibao valley to perform free open-air concerts at the Malecon in Puerto Chiquito on weekends. The International Jazz Festival in Altos de Chavon each June books US, Cuban and Dominican artists for three nights of performances in the Greek amphitheatre, with tickets ranging from 2,500 pesos general admission to 12,000 pesos front-row. The Festival del Cigarro Dominicano each October celebrates the tobacco-growing regions with factory tours, cigar rolling classes and tasting dinners at Casa de Campo; the main gala dinner costs 18,000 pesos per person including five courses and pairings. Fishing tournaments like the International Billfish Tournament at Casa de Campo marina, held mid-March, attract crews from Florida, Puerto Rico and Venezuela competing for marlin and sailfish offshore.
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Practical info & when to visit
Family activities include horseback riding at the Casa de Campo equestrian center, priced from 3,800 pesos for a one-hour trail ride through sugar-cane country, and tennis at the 13-court Casa de Campo tennis complex with Har-Tru clay courts for 2,500 pesos per hour including rackets and balls. Children enjoy the Kandela evening music show at Altos de Chavon amphitheatre, a one-hour spectacle of Dominican folk music and dance that runs at eight in the evening on Fridays and Saturdays for 1,800 pesos per adult and 900 pesos per child. Golf defines the upscale identity of the La Romana region. Casa de Campo's Teeth of the Dog course, designed by Pete Dye in 1971 and ranked among the top 50 courses globally by Golf Magazine, features seven oceanfront holes carved from coral rock along the Caribbean Sea. Green fees for resort guests are 18,000 pesos and for outside visitors 24,000 pesos, including cart, range balls and caddie tip. The Dye Fore course, opened in 2003, runs 7,770 yards across cliffs above the Chavon River and offers one of the most dramatic par-three holes in the Caribbean at the seventh hole, where players hit from a cliff platform across a 60-meter gorge. A third course, The Links, plays shorter and suits beginners with resort-guest green fees of 9,500 pesos. Golf packages combining unlimited play, private casita accommodation and meals start at 48,000 pesos per person per night during shoulder season from April to early June.
Beyond golf and diving, the Jaragua National Park border in the southwestern corner of the island is a three-hour drive from La Romana, offering a different ecosystem of arid scrub, pink flamingo lagoons and rhinoceros iguanas. A full-day 4x4 tour from Casa de Campo concierge costs 12,000 pesos per person including lunch, park entry and bilingual guide, returning by late evening. The Chavon River boat tour departs from the Casa de Campo marina twice daily for 2,500 pesos per person, running upriver for 90 minutes through mangrove channels that were filmed for the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now. Sunset cruises with rum cocktails depart at five-thirty during winter and six during summer, costing 3,200 pesos including two drinks and live merengue music. The Isla Catalina snorkel and scuba day trip loops back to La Romana by sunset after lunch and a stop at the underwater museum at Playa Grande. Plan at least three full days