Cuba Travel Help : The wonderful City of Havana

The wonderful City of Havana

For some people who has recently visited Cuba, Havana is the loveliest city in the world. The capital’s ability to seduce all never fails to astonish every one, thus they feel it only right to reflect on its charms.

A defining feature of Havana’s appeal has been its singular mix of ethnicities, beliefs, traditions, smells and contrasting colors since November 16, 1519, when - after having had three different locations - the Villa de San Cristóbal de La Habana was officially established, at the site where the Plaza de Armas, El Templete and its revered ceiba tree, are found today.

However, Havana is currently more popular than ever as confirmed by the third edition of the Seven Wonder Cities of the World competition, organized by the New7Wonders Foundation based in Switzerland, in 2014. Havana placed among the top wonder cities of the world, alongside Beirut (Lebanon), Doha (Qatar), Durban (South Africa), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), La Paz (Bolivia) and Vigan (The Philippines).

It is worth highlighting that the competition featured 1,200 cities from 220 countries, while Havana also featured among the 25 most photographed places in the world. According to the President of New7Wonders, Bernard Weber, the title of Wonder City of the World will be awarded to the Cuban capital on June 7, as a symbol of the global diversity of urban society and because everything – tangible or intangible – included within the 726.75 square kilometer area is Cuba.

THE KEY TO A NEW WORLD

Although there are many stories about how the city got its name, the most widely accepted is that relating to the Taíno chief Habaguanex. Boasting an advantageously positioned port and enviable geographic location, Havana became the most prized of Spain’s colonies throughout the Americas during the colonial period, and subsequently became known as the “Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies.”

Officially declared a city on December 20, 1592, by King Philip II of Spain, and following the relocation of the Spanish government headquarters to the area in 1593, from Santiago de Cuba, Havana became the island’s capital. The city currently covers 0.7% of the country’s surface area and has, among its extraordinary relics, over 30 National Monuments.

With its unique natural environment, Havana will forever be remembered as the “city of architecture, poetry, rebellions; the conspiring city, of great heroics, and of course, of culture.”

Diría Xonia Beltrán, director of Tourism for the popular city destination of Havana, noted that efforts are underway to further develop varied events and protect cultural, patrimonial and educational treasures; with work focused on cultural and scientific activities, which include the majority of the island’s professionals.

But despite the fact that one fifth of the island’s total population and 30% of its professionals live in Havana, and although the city generates over half of the country’s tourism revenue and Gross Domestic Product, the capital lacks mobility.

A HISTORIC CITY

What is more, as the city celebrates its 490th anniversary, Havana “is rundown in many places, in ruins in others, often the victim of neglect, negligent tendencies and lack of appreciation for the symbolic value of a city that was able to announce a new order which it has maintained for over half a century with the noble character of our own people.” Unlike many places throughout the Americas, Havana has successfully preserved its colonial architectural heritage.

The world famous Old Havana, which includes the city’s historic center and network of forts declared World Heritage sites by UNESCO in 1982, is interwoven among former palaces, mansions, small and large squares, cobblestone streets, churches, saints and lofty balconies filled with a mixture of people, voices, and flavors. Cuba’s oldest square, Plaza de Las Armas; that known as Plaza Vieja; Plaza San Francisco de Asís and Plaza de la Catedral, which were built at the end of the 16th century, have all become important icons of the area.

In addition to the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fort, which protected Spanish forces after the British navy captured Havana in 1762, and which still symbolically guards the bay, the city is home to castles built to ward off corsairs and pirates, while it also boasts some of the oldest forts in the Americas including the Real Fuerza (1577), San Salvador de La Punta (1600) and Tres Reyes Magos del Morro (1630).

One hundred and forty structures dating from the 16th-17th centuries still stand in the historic center, almost all military or religious buildings; as well as some 200 from the 18th century, the majority civil infrastructure spaces; and over 450 from the 19th century, during which urbanization greatly expanded. The city continued to develop rapidly expanding beyond the perimeters of the defensive wall constructed to protect it. Almost 100 years later, around 1863, that wall began to be demolished.

BEYOND THE WALLS

Havana began to grow rapidly during the first half of the 20th century. The city expanded from east to west in a rapid process of addition rather than substitution, over less than six decades. With the triumph of the Revolution the idea was now to focus on investing in the rest of the country in order to reduce the historic disparity between the capital and the rest of the island

Pre-1990s migration figures show that Havana had a sustainable migration rate. However, with the on set of the Special Period, this trend shot up and the city become an even more diverse place.

This is the same city that is home to the stunning Playas del Este beaches; whose Parque Metropolitano represents the enormous green lung of the capital; which today still features the first promenade built in the city; as well as Paula street, along which a young Martí would stroll, and the University of Havana stairway, where the most radical and authentic revolutionary ideals were formulated; which among Daiquirís and other alcoholic beverages guards the memory of visits by Ernest Hemingway to the El Floridita bar and restaurant, and Creole cuisine and wall scribblings at the La Bodeguita del Medio.

Havana also boasts the majestic Colon Cemetery and exquisite Hotel Nacional, which has seen important figures from the arts, culture and politics, parade along its hallways; ancestral Asian culture brought over by the Chinese from 1847; the grand neo-classical buildings which surround the Capitolio, the memorial at the Plaza de la Revolución, or the talented artists who have performed on stages such as that of the Alicia Alonso Grand Theater of Havana, the National Fine Arts Museum and Paseo del Prado.

To the west of the city the streets begin to widen leading to the busy neighborhood of Vedado, then onto the dazzling Tropicana Cabaret and 5th Avenue, whose elegance has seen it become a diplomatic and business center, until the Havana Convention Center, which hosts a wide variety of events.

It was to this Havana that the rebel soldiers entered in 1959, and where almost half of all visitors to the island come every year. Havana is quite simply the sui géneris mother of the social, cultural, economic and political evolution of a country committed to its people’s wellbeing.

Protected to the north by a eight kilometer-long sea wall (the Malecón), the warm and welcoming city, the inspiration for many poems and songs, greets visitors with the open arms of its Christ, and watched over by the La Giraldilla weathervane. Havana is the traditional melting pot, as described by Fernando Ortiz; a city which belongs to its residents and to all Cubans.

LOCAL GUIDE IN HAVANA

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