From the colonial plazas of Old Havana to the tobacco fields of Viñales and the reefs of María la Gorda, Cuba packs an astonishing range of places into one long Caribbean island. These are ten of the most rewarding, with the history and practical background behind each one.

Varadero beach and turquoise water on Cuba’s Hicacos Peninsula
A broad beach and turquoise coastal water in the historical Varadero photograph.

Havana: Old Havana, Plaza de Armas and the Malecón

1. Havana

The Spanish founded Havana in 1519, and its historic centre, covering 214 hectares, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with its fortification system. Old Havana has five great plazas: Plaza de Armas, Plaza Vieja, Plaza de San Francisco, Plaza del Cristo and Plaza de la Catedral. Baroque and neoclassical monuments such as the cathedral and the Convent of San Francisco de Asís stand beside houses with arcades, balconies, wrought-iron gates and inner courtyards. The harbour is guarded by forts built from the 16th to the 19th centuries, among them the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, the Castillo de la Real Fuerza and the vast Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña.

Street view of Havana, Cuba, in a historical photograph

2. Plaza de Armas

Plaza de Armas is the oldest square in Old Havana. Space for it was set aside at the city’s founding and it was laid out in the early 1520s, then taken over for military use by the 1580s, which gave it its name, “Place of Arms”. In 1777 a church was demolished to make room for the governor-general’s residence, which fills one whole side of the square. The Castillo de la Real Fuerza and El Templete, the neoclassical temple marking the city’s founding, stand alongside.

Plaza de Armas, the oldest square in Old Havana

3. The Malecón

Officially Avenida de Maceo, the Malecón is Havana’s seafront boulevard and seawall. Construction began in 1901, and it now runs for about 8 km from the mouth of Havana Harbour in Old Havana, past Centro Habana and Vedado, to the mouth of the Almendares River. It was built to protect the city from the sea, and in winter cold fronts, the frentes fríos, still send waves crashing over the wall.

The Malecón seafront boulevard in Havana

Miramar and the Russian Embassy

4. Miramar

West of the centre, Miramar is a residential district of the municipality of Playa. Before the revolution it was home to many of Havana’s wealthiest families, with large houses and mansions, and in the 1950s it was among the city’s most glamorous areas. Its main thoroughfare, Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue), is lined with embassies.

Miramar residential district of Havana

5. The Russian Embassy

Miramar’s most striking landmark is the former Soviet, now Russian, Embassy at Quinta Avenida 6402. Designed by Aleksandr Rochegov in a mix of Constructivism and Brutalism, it was built between December 1978 and November 1987.

The Russian Embassy tower in Miramar, Havana

Finca Vigía, Hemingway’s house

6. Finca Vigía

Ernest Hemingway lived at Finca Vigía, on a hill about 13 km south-east of Havana in San Francisco de Paula, from 1939 to 1960. He first rented the house and bought it in December 1940. Here he wrote much of For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. His 12-metre wooden fishing boat Pilar is kept on the grounds. The Cuban government restored the house and reopened it to visitors in 2007, and the Finca Vigía Foundation continues to work on conserving the house, its documents and its collections.

Finca Vigía
Books, furniture and personal objects inside Hemingway’s former home at Finca Vigía.

Viñales, Trinidad, Varadero and María la Gorda

7. Viñales Valley

In Pinar del Río province in western Cuba, the Viñales Valley is a UNESCO-listed cultural landscape. Dome-shaped limestone hills called mogotes rise up to 300 m from a valley floor where tobacco is still grown with traditional methods such as animal-drawn ploughs, because machine cultivation lowers the quality of the leaf. Viñales village is made up mostly of one-storey wooden houses with porches.

Viñales
Rounded limestone hills above cultivated land in Cuba’s Viñales Valley.

8. Trinidad

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founded the Villa de la Santísima Trinidad on 23 December 1514. In Sancti Spíritus province, it grew rich on sugar, and in 1988 it was inscribed on the UNESCO list together with the Valle de los Ingenios, three valleys about 12 km north-east of town that hold the sites of 75 former sugar mills. Plaza Mayor is lined with cobbled streets, pastel houses with iron grilles and palaces such as the Palacio Brunet and the neoclassical Palacio Cantero, now the municipal history museum. Playa Ancón and the Topes de Collantes mountain reserve are both close by.

Colonial streets of Trinidad, Cuba

9. Varadero

Varadero lies on the Hicacos Peninsula in Matanzas province, about 140 km east of Havana. The peninsula is no more than 1.2 km wide, runs for over 20 km and is fringed by more than 20 km of white sandy beaches. Its most famous building is Xanadu, the three-storey mansion completed around 1930 for the American millionaire Irénée du Pont, now a hotel and restaurant. Juan Gualberto Gómez Airport, Cuba’s second airport, is about 16 km away.

10. María la Gorda

At Cuba’s far western end, María la Gorda sits on the Bay of Corrientes, about 306 km south-west of Havana, beside the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. It is best known for diving, and its single hotel serves mainly divers and naturalists. The name comes from the legend of a Venezuelan woman said to have been marooned here by pirates.

Calm water at María la Gorda on Cuba’s western tip

Cuba travel advice today

Check official advice before planning: the UK Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel to Cuba because a worsening economic crisis has caused severe shortages of fuel, electricity, water and basic goods, disrupting transport and flights. US travellers should also read OFAC’s Cuba travel rules, since tourist travel is not an authorised category.

For another Caribbean island, explore Aruba, or compare colonial streets in historic towns and their different stories. The Russia photography feature offers more Soviet-era architecture.

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