'In the 40s and 50s Havana was the Paris of the Caribbean. Everyone was always well-dressed.' (Andy Garcia)
'In a museum in Havana there are 2 skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.' (Mark Twain)
There was a half-day excursion to Havana included in the trip as standard but we knew that was never going to be long enough to get a flavour of the city so we decided to sign up for an additional day trip, hoping there wouldn't be too much overlap. As luck would have it, the itineraries were quite different.
Getting a 'flavour' of Havana began on the bus journey there: not the standard service station we are accustomed to in the UK!
One of the drawbacks of packaged excursions is the almost inevitable 'visit' to an emporium wanting to sell you stuff in the guise of learning about some vital aspect of local life. So it was in Havana with a visit to a large shop selling all manner of Cuban rums. (Not that we didn't sample plenty in the hotel!) Far more interesting to us was the Old Havana street on which the shop stood with its array of fabulously brightly-painted buildings.
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| We weren't the only ones more interested in the outside! |
Cuban dudes and great vehicles on display, as usual.
Once you get into the city it's all-too-easy to forget how near to the ocean you are.
MORRO CASTLE:
(Spanish: Castillo de los Tres Reyes Magos del Morro)
Named after the 3 biblical Magi, this fortress built originally in 1589 guards the entrance to Havana bay. It once also housed a school for lighthouse keepers!
Having been dropped off by the coach we took a brief look at the outside of the fortress.
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Then we set off for a walk around the old part of the city.
SPANISH GOVERNORS' MANSION:
Constructed in 1776, this building originally housed the official residence of te Governors of Havana, a prison and the meeting place for the city council. The last of the colonial governors vacated the palace when Cuba gained independence from Spain in 1898.
CATEDRAL DE SAN CRISTOBAL:
' ....music set in stone' (Alejo Carpentier)
Once the site of Christopher Columbus' remains (until 1898 when they were moved to Seville Cathedral), plans were drawn up in 1748 by the Jesuits to build a church, convent and collegium on the site of a swamp that was drained and used as a dockyard before the cathedral was built, and work continued despite the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. It is one of the most visited attractions in Old Havana.
PLAZA DE LA CATEDRAL:
The Cathedral Square is one of the 5 main squares in Old Havana and was originally named Plaza de la Cienaga (Swamp Square) because of its muddy terrain. By the 18th century wealthy families had moved into the area and begun to build mansions there.
Sitting at a table in the square were 2 women members of the Santeria religion, recognisable for their distinctive clothing. Santeria translates into English as the 'way of the saints' and is an Afro-Cuban religion that developed amid the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries. It blended traditional religions brought to Cuba by enslaved West Africans and the Roman Catholicism of the Spanish colonialists.
Just off the square we came across this interesting street sign.
Calle O'Reilly marks the spot where Alexander O'Reilly came ashore in Havana in 1763. O'Reilly was born in Baltrasna, Co. Meath in 1723 and like many of his generation left Ireland to serve in foreign Catholic armies. He rose to become Inspector-General of Infantry for the Spanish Empire and was ennobled as a Count.
PARQUE CENTRAL:
One of the best known and central sites of the city, we found Parque Central after having lunch at the nearby Hotel Inglaterra.
In the centre of the parque is a marble statue of Jose Marti erected in 1905. The monument is ringed by 28 royal palms planted to signify Marti's birth date of birth.
Havana is home to a fleet of yellow, bubble-like auto rickshaws called Coco taxis; 3 wheeled vehicles carrying up to 3 people.
NATIONAL CAPITOL BUILDING:
Another of Havana's most visited and most photographed sights, El Capitolio was built between 1926 and 1929 on land that had been a railway terminal, commissioned by Cuba's US-backed dictator Gerardo Machado and paid for by the post-WW1 boom in sugar sales. It was then the tallest building in Havana. Up until the Cuban Revolution of 1959 the Congress was housed there but it then gradually fell into disrepair with the abolition of the Congress and its use as the home of the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the National Library of Science and Technology. Restoration did not start in earnest until 2013 and it is slowly being brought back into use as the home of Cuba's National Assembly.
Despite its similarity to the US Capitol Building in Washington DC, the inspiration for its dome came from the Pantheon in Paris. It houses the world's third largest indoor statue. And it officially marks kilometre zero for Cuba, i.e. distances from Havana are measured from an exact spot in the centre of the main hall!
PLAZA DE LA REVOLUCION:
This square epitomised to us all that went wrong after the high principles and promises of Castro's revolution of 1959.
At 72,000 square metres, the 11th largest square in the world, it is where political rallies take place and Castro and other political leaders addressed millions of Cubans on many important occasions (such as 1 May and 26 July each year) often speaking for up to 8 hours! It is ironically also the site of large Masses held during the Papal visits of John Paul II in 1998 and Francis I in 2015 when 1 million people (nearly 10% of the Cuban population) crammed into the square.
Conceived by French urbanist Jean-Claude Forestier in the 1920s, Plaza Civica as it was then called, was part of Havana's 'new city' built on a small hill in the manner of Paris' Place de l'Etoile. Today it is the base of the Cuban government, surrounded by grey utilitarian buildings constructed in the late 1950s.
On the northern side of the square is a star-shaped tower, a statue of the national hero Jose Marti surrounded by 6 columns, and gardens. It remains the largest monument to a writer in the world.
A series of competitions to design the tower began in 1939 but in 1952 when Batista seized power in a coup work on the construction had not begun. He committed to getting the tower built but rejected the design which had won the 1943 competition in favour of one designed by a group including his personal friends. The resultant outcry further delayed building as the design had to be modified. Construction finally began in 1953 on the 100th anniversary of Jose Marti's birth. Further problems ensued about the right to compensation for local inhabitants forced to move to make way for the construction: their case was taken up by a young Fidel Castro.
The ugly concrete block on the northern side of the square is the Ministerio del Interior, well known for its huge mural of Che Guevara (a copy of Alberto Korda's famous 1960 photograph) with the words Hasta la victoria siempre (Always Toward Victory) emblazoned underneath.
The back wall of the Ministerio del Interior is home to another huge mural of the Cuban revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos (1932-1959) with the quotation Vas bien, Fidel. (You're doing fine, Fidel). He was presumed dead when a small plane he was travelling in disappeared during a night flight to Havana in 1959. Conspiracy theorists maintain that Castro was behind the death, jealous of a popular potential future rival.
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