Havana travel guide

Top 10 sights in Havana

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1

   USS Maine

   An American battleship that blew up in Havana harbour on 15 February 1898, killing 266 men, which the New York press blamed on Spain and Congress used as grounds for war. Her mast stands at Arlington and a monument on the Malecón carries her name.

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2. 

   2© Velvet · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Havana Cathedral

   A baroque cathedral of 1777 on Plaza de la Catedral, its two towers deliberately unequal and its coral-stone facade full of fossils. Columbus's remains lay here from 1796 until Spain took them to Seville in 1898.

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3. 

   3© Paul Mannix · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Museum of the Revolution

   The presidential palace from 1920 to 1959, where Batista's office was shot up in a failed student assault in 1957 and the bullet holes are still shown. The yacht Granma, which carried Castro's eighty-two men from Mexico in 1956, is in a glass pavilion behind.

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4. 

   4© Glasperlenspiel at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress

   An 18th-century fortress on the hill east of the entrance to Havana harbour, the third largest in the Americas. It stands on a 60-metre rise beside Morro Castle and forms part of the Old Havana World Heritage site.

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5. 

   5© LBM1948 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Castillo de la Real Fuerza

   A bastioned fort begun in 1558 on the west side of the harbour, and the oldest stone fortification in the Americas. Set too far inside the bay to defend the entrance, it became the governor's residence; the bronze weathervane on its tower, La Giraldilla, is the city's emblem.

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6. 

   6

   Morro Castle

   The fortress guarding the harbour mouth, built from 1589 to a design by the Italian engineer Battista Antonelli and taken by the British in 1762 after a forty-four-day siege. Its 1845 lighthouse still works, and the nightly cannon at nine is fired from the fort next door.

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7. 

   7© Cyberesque from UK · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Christ of Havana

   A Carrara marble Christ twenty metres tall on the hill across the bay, carved by Jilma Madera and blessed on Christmas Day 1958, fifteen days before Castro entered the city. It looks straight down on Old Havana and is reached by the harbour ferry to Casablanca.

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8. 

   8© No machine-readable author provided. Sandino235~commonswiki assumed (based on co · CC BY-SA 2.5

   Vedado

   The twentieth-century quarter west of Old Havana, laid out on a grid between Infanta and the Almendares river with the university, the Hotel Nacional and the Colón cemetery in it. The Plaza de la Revolución and most of the city's music venues are here.

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9. 

   9© El Toñio · CC BY-SA 2.0

   National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba

   The national art museum, split between a 1954 modernist block for Cuban art and the 1927 Centro Asturiano for the European and ancient collections. The Cuban building traces the island's painting from colonial portraits through Wifredo Lam to post-1959 work.

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10. 

    10© Miss Bono at English Wikipedia · CC BY 3.0

    John Lennon Park

    A Vedado park with a bronze Lennon sitting on a bench, unveiled by Castro in 2000 in a country that had banned the Beatles in the sixties. His round glasses were stolen so often that an attendant now keeps them and fits them when visitors arrive.

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1. 

   1© InZweiZeiten · CC BY 3.0

   Finca Vigía

   The hilltop house at San Francisco de Paula where Hemingway lived from 1939 to 1960 and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. Nine thousand books, his typewriter and his boat Pilar are kept as he left them; visitors look in through the windows.

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2. 

   2© Happypepe · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Miramar

   The seafront district west of the Almendares, built up in the 1920s and 1930s as the wealthy quarter, its avenues lined with laurel trees and mansions. Most of those houses are now embassies and foreign company offices, which is why the streets are quiet and well kept.

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3. 

   3© Burkhard Mücke · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Plaza Vieja

   Square in Old Havana laid out in 1559 as a residential space rather than a military or church one. A car park sunk into it in 1952 was removed in 1996 and the fountain rebuilt.

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4. 

   4© Gorupdebesanez · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Plaza de la Catedral

   The last of Old Havana's four main squares to be built, on filled-in marsh once used as a naval yard, and closed on its north side by the cathedral of 1777. The mansions around it are eighteenth-century, and one holds El Patio, where the courtyard bands play.

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5. 

   5

   Palacio de los Capitanes Generales

   The baroque residence of the Spanish captains general, finished in 1791 and later the city hall and the seat of the US governor. It is now the Museum of the City, keeping its period rooms and the wooden street outside — laid in blocks so carriage wheels would not wake the governor.

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6. 

   6© Abdeaitali · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Abdallah Mosque

   The first mosque in Cuba, opened in Old Havana in June 2015 in a restored colonial building with Turkish funding, for a Muslim community of a few thousand. Before it, Friday prayers were held in a room at the Arab House down the street.

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7. 

   7

   Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis

   A Franciscan convent and church begun in 1548 and rebuilt after storm damage from 1716, whose 42-metre tower was the tallest in Havana. Deconsecrated since the nineteenth century, it now serves as a concert hall with the best acoustics in the old city.

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8. 

   8

   San Salvador de la Punta Fortress

   Fort at the harbour entrance of Havana, finished in 1600. A chain was drawn from here across the channel each night to bar the way to enemy ships.

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9. 

   9© Eric Marshall · CC BY 3.0

   Plaza de Armas, Havana

   The oldest square in Havana, laid out in 1519 when the town moved to this site. It is paved with wooden blocks rather than stone so that cartwheels would not disturb the governor's siesta.

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10. 

    10© Elemaki · CC BY-SA 2.5

    José Martí Anti-Imperialist Platform

    An open-air stage built in 2000 on the Malecón directly opposite the US mission, put up during the campaign to return the child Elián González and used for mass rallies since. A wall of 138 flagpoles was raised behind it in 2006 to block the Americans' electronic sign.

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