Paseo del Prado

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). The central pedestrian strip is paved with white marble and flanked by cast-iron lamp posts, wrought-iron benches, and eight bronze lions — the longest one-block marble walkway in the Americas.

The buildings lining the Prado include the Hotel Sevilla (made famous by Graham Greene in 'Our Man in Havana'), the Hotel Inglaterra (Cuba's oldest operating hotel, from 1875, where José Martí made his 1879 speech calling for independence), and the Hotel Parque Central. Children play in the marble strip, old men argue about baseball on the benches, and the Paseo remains one of the most democratic and atmospheric public spaces in the city.