Havana, Cuba

Havana, Cuba

Havana, Cuba (cc)

Discover the city of Che Guevara and Hemingway, with its UNESCO-listed old quarter and infectious rhythm. There are colorful old forts and grand plazas, bars with the constant din of chatter, a museum devoted entirely to revolution, colonial-era homes shaded by age-old trees with hanging aerial roots, and a happening shoreline promenade, the malecón, where you can watch Cuban life watching you.

Havana Travel Guide

Introduction

Havana, La Habana in Spanish, is a city steeped in history, culture and revolution. It's a city where Che Guevara, the world's most iconic revolutionary, looms large, and, too, Fidel Castro, the world's longest-reigning dictator. It's a lively city, the largest in the Caribbean, brimming with colorful bars, shops and restaurants, together with ancient forts and grand plazas, resplendent public parks and age-old colonial homes, the last restored and shaded by huge trees with hanging aerial roots. It's a city where you can search out Hemingway's haunts in the old quarter, Viejo Habana, or Old Havana – now a UNESCO World Heritage SIte – visit a museum devoted entirely to revolution, take in a world-class concert, or meander along the malecón, a walkway that traces the shoreline and where you can kick back, sip Cuban beer and watch Cuban life watching you. Indeed, here is a city alive with music and rhythm and dance and chatter, at once a fabulous milieu of disparate ethnicities and diverse architecture, where influences of Neoclassical, Baroque, Moorish, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Roman, Colonial and Art Deco, together with flourishes of Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, have come home to roost. It is, ultimately, a city with the proverbial cigar – make that a Cuban cigar.

Location

Havana is situated at the northwestern end of the Caribbean island of Cuba – which in turn sits at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico – southwest of Miami and the Bahamas and northeast of Cancun, Mexico.