18 Stunning Architecture Landmarks in Havana
18 landmarks with verified facts and stories
Centro Habana
Centro Habana, Havana, Cuba
Centro Habana is Havana's most densely populated and least restored district — a grid of narrow streets between Old Havana and Vedado where the crumbling colonial and Art Deco buildings house the city's working-class population in conditions that range from precarious to beautiful.
Colon Cemetery
Calzada Zapata, Plaza de la Revolución, Havana, Cuba
Cementerio Cristóbal Colón (Colon Cemetery) is one of the great urban cemeteries of the world — a 56-hectare necropolis laid out in a grid in 1876 with over 500 ornate mausoleums, chapels, and marble sculptures that form one of the finest open-air sculpture collections in Latin America.
Cristo de La Habana
Carretera Casablanca, Regla, Havana, Cuba
The Cristo de La Habana is a 20-metre white marble statue of Jesus Christ that overlooks Havana Bay from a hilltop in Casablanca on the eastern side of the harbour.
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 Capitolio
Paseo del Prado, Centro Habana, Havana, Cuba
El Capitolio is Havana's most imposing building — a neoclassical capitol completed in 1929 that was modelled on the US Capitol in Washington (though Cuban guides will tell you it's one metre taller, one metre wider, and more beautiful, all of which may be true) and served as the seat of Cuba's government until the revolution.
El Morro (Castillo de los Tres Reyes)
Carretera de la Cabaña, Regla, Havana, Cuba
El Morro is the fortress that guards the entrance to Havana Bay — a massive stone castle completed in 1630 after 40 years of construction and designed by Italian engineer Giovanni Battista Antonelli.
Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña
Calle Habana, Guanabacoa, Havana, Cuba
La Cabaña is the largest colonial fortress in the Americas — an 18th-century stone fortification on the eastern shore of Havana harbour that was built by the Spanish after the British captured Havana in 1762 (the fortress was designed to prevent a repeat of that humiliation, which it did — no one has captured Havana since).
Gran Teatro de La Habana
Paseo del Prado, Centro Habana, Havana, Cuba
The Gran Teatro de La Habana is Cuba's national theatre — a Neo-Baroque confection built in 1915 on the foundation of an earlier 1838 theatre, where Enrico Caruso famously refused to perform in 1920 because of a hurricane warning (he was afraid of the weather, not the singing).
Museo de la Revolución
Refugio 1, Habana Vieja, Havana
The Museum of the Revolution occupies the former Presidential Palace — a sumptuous neoclassical building completed in 1920 whose interior was decorated by Tiffany's of New York and whose marble staircases, frescoed ceilings, and Hall of Mirrors rivalled any government building in the Americas.
Old Havana (Habana Vieja)
Habana Vieja, Havana
Old Havana is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most complete colonial urban landscapes in the Americas — a 4-square-kilometre district of 16th to 18th-century plazas, Baroque churches, neoclassical palaces, and the crumbling, magnificent residential buildings that have been slowly restored since the 1990s under the direction of the City Historian's Office.
Paseo del Prado
Paseo del Prado, Centro Habana, Havana, Cuba
Paseo del Prado is Havana's grand 19th-century promenade — a tree-lined boulevard running from Parque Central to the Malecón that was laid out in 1772 as the first paseo outside the old city walls and remodelled in 1927-28 by the French landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier (who also designed Paris's Champ de Mars in its modern form).
Plaza de Armas
Plaza de Armas, Habana Vieja, La Habana
Plaza de Armas is Havana's oldest square — laid out in 1519 as the military parade ground of the original Spanish settlement and still surrounded by the buildings that made Havana the capital of Spanish colonial Cuba for 400 years.
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 la Revolución
Plaza de la Revolución, Plaza de la Revolución, Havana, Cuba
Plaza de la Revolución is where modern Cuban history has been performed — a vast concrete square that can hold up to 1 million people and has been the setting for Fidel Castro's marathon speeches, Pope John Paul II's 1998 mass, and every major state ceremony since the revolution.
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.
Plaza Vieja
Plaza Vieja, Habana Vieja, Havana
Plaza Vieja is Old Havana's most successfully restored square — a 16th-century plaza that has been returned to its original beauty after decades of neglect (including the particularly unfortunate 1950s decision to build an underground parking garage beneath it, since demolished).
Universidad de La Habana
San Lázaro, Centro Habana, Havana, Cuba
The University of Havana is Cuba's oldest and most prestigious university — founded in 1728 by Dominican friars and relocated to its current Vedado campus in 1902, where the Greek Revival main building (completed in 1906) sits atop a grand 88-step staircase known as the Escalinata.
Vedado & Hotel Nacional
Acceso a Hotel Morón, Morón, Cuba
Vedado is Havana's grandest residential neighbourhood — a grid of tree-lined streets and mansions built in the early 20th century when Cuba's sugar wealth created a class of millionaires who built their houses in the fashionable Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and modernist styles that were sweeping through the Americas.
Explore architecture in Havana
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