Havana Travel Guide

Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919–1999) kept a lifelong bond with Cuba, and this small Havana house museum preserves that connection under his name. Guayasamín built his reputation on distorted hands and skulls — his 'Age of Wrath' series turned the violence of the twentieth century into a silent scream — and his decades-long friendship with Fidel Castro left a trail of works and documents on the island. The museum is modest in scale: photographs, reproduced canvases and archival material sketch the meeting of one of Latin America's great expressionists with a revolution he chose to stand beside. It suits a short, unhurried visit threaded between city sights.

This bronze honours Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (1819–1874), the plantation owner who freed his slaves in October 1868 and issued the Grito de Yara, dragging Cuba into the Ten Years' War against Spain and earning the title 'Father of the Nation'. The figure follows standard iconography — nineteenth-century dress, resolute stance — and Havana's version works less as a destination than as a fortuitous stop on an old-town walk. Two minutes at the plinth fix the timeline: the Ten Years' War, the 1895 War of Independence, then 1898. Cuba's long nineteenth century effectively begins with his call to arms.

Casa de México Benito Juárez occupies an 18th-century colonial mansion in Old Havana, named for the Zapotec president who led Mexico's reform era — 'respect for the rights of others is peace' is his best-known line. In practice the house works as a cultural centre: a permanent display of Mexican folk art, from Oaxacan alebrijes and Talavera ceramics to regional textiles, plus rotating exhibitions of contemporary exchange between the two countries. The building itself rewards attention — a stone arcaded courtyard where you can sit in the cross-breeze free of charge, a rarity in the old town. Half an hour covers it, ideal as a shaded pause mid-way through an Old Havana circuit.

Palacio del Segundo Cabo stands on the west side of Plaza de Armas, built in the 1770s as the residence of the colony's second-in-command — the captain general's deputy — and later home to the postal headquarters and the senate. Since a thorough restoration it has reopened as an interpretation centre for Cuba–Spain cultural relations: rather than cases of objects, the rooms use film, sound installations and touch screens to narrate four entangled centuries, from conquest and migration to the languages and recipes the two countries still share. The building itself is half the visit — stone arcades and a grand stair preserving viceregal dignity, with top-floor windows framing the palms and statues of the square. Allow an hour.

The building is the main exhibit at Havana's City Museum: the Palace of the Captains General, begun in 1776 and completed in 1791, served for over 120 years as the seat of Spanish governors, then passed to the American military government and the city authorities. The two arcaded storeys around the courtyard now display colonial carriages, weapons, flags and governors' furniture, while the throne room keeps the drapery prepared for a Spanish royal visit that never came. The marble Columbus statue long the courtyard's famous photo stop was removed from display in 2020 — what a city chooses to show, and not to show, is itself a historical statement. Allow ninety minutes.

The Marquis of Arcos' townhouse is an 18th-century aristocratic residence in Old Havana whose street face steals the show: a heavy carved stone portal topped by the family crest and stacked scrollwork, among the finest stonework on the old town's streets. In the marquis' day the arrangement was typical colonial layering — stables and servants below, family quarters above. Today the palace functions as a cultural venue, its courtyard and halls borrowed for small exhibitions and performances, and access follows the event calendar: if the door stands open, the patio alone justifies a detour. Expect twenty to forty minutes rather than a full museum visit.