Havana travel guide
The island’s capital, Havana (La Habana), with almost 3 million inhabitants, is one of the most intoxicating cities in the world. Ever since its early maritime days and through the 1950s – when gangsters who ran prostitution and gambling rackets made Havana synonymous with decadence – it has always held a slightly seedy, languorous allure. That nostalgic appeal is still evident.
Today Havana is a one-of-a-kind, fascinating study in decay and rebirth. Unrestrained ocean waves and salty sea spray have eroded elegant buildings and the seawall of the Malecón, the sumptuous promenade and roadway that traces the edge of the sea. Throughout the city, crumbling houses three and four storeys tall, somehow still standing, line backstreets where children play stick ball and adults survey the street from their balconies or doorways. In Old Havana, magnificently restored colonial palaces and stately baroque churches and convents crowd pulsating squares. Once the finest colonial city in the Americas, Havana’s grandeur has not been destroyed even by decades of crisis and neglect. No less defiant than Fidel Castro himself, beneath the rubble this city is a living, breathing, vital and sensual creature.
Havana sprawls over more than 700 sq km (270 sq miles) and is divided into many districts. Those of greatest interest are Habana Vieja (Old Havana), Centro Habana (Central Havana), Vedado and – to a lesser extent – Miramar. The latter two districts are 20th century residential and shopping barrios that extend west and south of the old city. While most areas within a neighborhood can be covered comfortably on foot, passing from one to the other usually requires a taxi or cocotaxi (a buggy powered by a motorcycle engine).
Old Havana (La Habana Vieja)
The oldest section of Havana is the city’s most spectacular, even if restoration work and gleaming coats of pastel colonial colors are leaving parts of it with a slightly more sanitized feel than the weathered working-class neighborhoods that extend along the water and inland. As the location of the city’s greatest historical sites, Old Havana is where you’ll want to spend most of your time, if it is limited.
First founded in 1515 on the south coast, Havana was moved to this site along a vast natural harbor in 1519. During the 16th century a fleet of galleons laden with treasures used the port as a pit stop on the way back to Spain from the New World. By the late 16th century, pirate attacks prompted the building of extensive city defenses – colossal forts, a chain across the harbor mouth, and prominent city walls – making Havana the ‘Bulwark of the West Indies’.
The wealthiest residents lived with their slaves in grand mansions constructed in the mudéjar style, a Christian-Muslim architectural tradition dating from the Spanish medieval period. Cool courtyards bathed in penumbral light sheltered from the sun and street noise behind massive doors, slatted blinds, carved iron window bars (rejas) and half-moon stained-glass windows (mediopuntos).
The presence of such architectural wonders, no matter how dilapidated, led UNESCO to add Old Havana (along with the city’s early fortifications) to its World Heritage List in 1982. In the central tourist quarter buildings have been or are being spruced up, mainly with funds raised by the City Historian’s Office, headed by Eusebio Leal Spengler. Once restored, the buildings are turned into hotels, museums and galleries, or become once more the splendid old shops they used to be. Many other buildings are propped up by wooden columns: their arcades, fluted pillars and mosaic tiles teetering on their last legs, awaiting their turn. At night, away from the main restaurant and bar areas, the darkness of the streets is punctuated only by the neon glow of television sets from tiny front rooms and the occasional headlights of gas-guzzling vintage Chevrolets and Plymouths, though much of the historical center is now a pedestrians-only zone.
Havana’s past lives on, evoked in part by legendary locations from the pages of popular novels and the lives of fiction writers. These include Graham Greene’s Hotel Sevilla, where ‘Our Man in Havana’ went to meet his secret service contact, and Ernest Hemingway’s favorite watering holes (El Floridita and La Bodeguita del Medio), as well as the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where he penned much of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Top places to visit in Havana
Plaza de la Catedral
Havana’s sumptuous Plaza de la Catedral, the focus of Habana Vieja life, could be a stage set. Tourists linger at El Patio’s outdoor café, sipping coffee or mojitos and tapping their toes to Cuban son. The all-hours hubbub here is infectious. The glorious baroque façade and asymmetrical bell-towers of the late 18th-century cathedral are the square’s top attraction. The church, begun by Jesuits in 1748, is a thing of beauty; one half expects its bells to erupt in triumphant song. Its interior is surprisingly plain, but it once held the remains of Christopher Columbus. Just south of the cathedral are superb colonial mansions with bright shutters and mediopuntos, and an attractive little cul-de-sac (Callejón de Chorro) with a graphic arts workshop.
Of particular interest in the Cathedral Square is the Museo de Arte Colonial housed in a handsome palace dating from 1622 although its most important occupant, Lieutenant Colonel Don Luís Chacón lived there from 1726.
Plaza de Armas
Plaza de Armas, which surrounds a statue of the patriot Céspedes and is ringed by shaded marble benches and second-hand bookstalls, is Havana’s oldest square. It dates to the city’s founding in 1519.
On the square’s eastern side a small neoclassical temple, El Templete, marks the spot where the first Catholic mass was celebrated in 1519. Next door is one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, Hotel Santa Isabel. To the north, the squat but angular and moated Castillo de la Real Fuerza (Fort of the Royal Forces; Tues–Sun 9.30am–5pm; charge) is one of the oldest forts in the Americas, begun in 1558.
The battlements afford views over the harbor, and the bronze La Giraldilla weather vane on one of the fort’s towers – depicting a woman scanning the seas for her lost husband, an early Cuban governor – has been adopted as the symbol of the city and of Havana Club rum.
Calle Obispo
Running from Plaza de Armas to Parque Central, the pedestrianised Calle Obispo is Old Havana’s most important thoroughfare. Here you will find some smart shops catering to those with CUCs to spend, and you can peer into the courtyards of Havana’s oldest homes. Equally fascinating are the two parallel, partly residential streets – O’Reilly and Obrapía – where neoclassical and colonial buildings intermingle with decrepit tenements. Restored Old Havana now extends all the way to Plaza Vieja and along pretty much all of Calle Obispo.
Capitolio
The monumental Capitolio is a replica of the American capitol in Washington, DC. Completed in 1929, it reflects the period when Cuba was in the thrall of the United States. Its vast bronze doors pictorially chart the island’s history, and the immense main gallery inside has a replica diamond in the floor beneath the dome, that marks the spot from which all distances in the country are measured.
The Prado
Old Havana's loveliest avenue, the Prado (officially known as Paseo de Martí), runs from Parque Central to the sea and officially separates Old Havana from Centro. It was built in the 18th century as a promenade outside the old city walls. Grand but run-down buildings, with fading flamingo-pink and lime-green façades, and ornate columns, flank a raised promenade of laurels, gas lamps and marble benches. In the 19th century, after the city walls collapsed, this was the most fashionable strolling ground for the city’s wealthy. Now it serves as a mini park for habaneros, from musicians and roaming couples to children playing on homemade skateboards and go-karts, or practicing baseball shots.
Havana's forts
Cuba’s most impressive forts sit brooding over the capital’s commercial harbor. Take a taxi through the road tunnel beneath the water to reach them. The older one, built at the end of the 16th century, is the Castillo de los Tres Santos Reyes Magos del Morro, better known as ‘El Morro’. From its position at the harbor mouth, the views of Havana over the defiant cannons are magical.
The vast Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, known as ‘La Cabaña’, running beside the harbor, was constructed after the English capture of Havana in 1763. The largest fort ever built in the Americas, it is impressively well preserved, and the gardens and ramparts are romantically lit in the evening. A ceremony held at 9pm (El Cañonazo) re-enacts the firing of a cannon that marked the closing of the city gates.
