7 landmarks in La Habana Vieja with verified facts and stories most people walk right past.
Edificio Bacardi
Avenida de Bélgica (Monserrate), La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
The Edificio Bacardi is Havana's greatest Art Deco building — a 12-storey tower completed in 1930 as the headquarters of the Bacardi rum company and widely considered one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in Latin America.
El Malecón
Malecón, La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
The Malecón is Havana's 8-kilometre seawall promenade — a broad, curving boulevard along the city's north coast that serves as Havana's living room, dating spot, fishing pier, exercise track, and the place where the entire social life of the city plays out against a backdrop of crashing waves and the crumbling facades of Art Deco and neoclassical apartment buildings.
Fábrica de Arte Cubano (FAC)
Fábrica, La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
The Fábrica de Arte Cubano is Havana's most exciting cultural space — a converted cooking-oil factory in Vedado that houses contemporary art galleries, performance spaces, a cinema, bars, and a dance floor in a single complex that has become the epicentre of Havana's creative scene since opening in 2014.
Hemingway's Havana (Finca Vigía)
Cuba, La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
Finca Vigía is the house where Ernest Hemingway lived for 21 years — a hilltop estate in the suburb of San Francisco de Paula, 15 kilometres from central Havana, where he wrote 'The Old Man and the Sea,' 'A Moveable Feast,' and 'Islands in the Stream.
La Bodeguita del Medio
Empedrado, La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
La Bodeguita del Medio is Havana's most famous bar — a tiny restaurant on Calle Empedrado in Old Havana that has been serving mojitos since 1942 and whose walls are covered in autographs, photographs, and graffiti from Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Allende, Nat King Cole, and every other cultural luminary who passed through Havana in the 20th century.
Plaza de la Catedral
Cathedral Square, La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
Plaza de la Catedral is the most beautiful square in Havana — an asymmetric cobblestoned plaza dominated by the Baroque facade of the Cathedral of San Cristóbal (completed in 1777, with one tower deliberately wider than the other to allow rainwater to drain — a practical asymmetry that has become the building's most distinctive feature).
Plaza de San Francisco
San Francisco Square, La Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba
Plaza de San Francisco is one of the four great squares of Old Havana — a cobblestone plaza facing the harbour, dominated by the 16th-century Basilica of San Francisco de Asís, whose 42-metre bell tower was for centuries the tallest structure in Havana and the first landmark visible to ships entering the bay.
Explore La Habana Vieja with VoiceWalks
GPS-guided narration at every landmark. Tap a spot on the map, hear the story.