Centro Habana

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. The neighbourhood is where daily Havana life happens without the filter of tourism — the bodega queues, the domino games on the sidewalks, the music drifting from open windows, and the social life that Cubans conduct in public because their apartments are too small for private entertaining.

Barrio Chino (Chinatown), centred on the Cuchillo de Zanja, is a remnant of what was once the largest Chinese community in Latin America — the community has shrunk dramatically since the revolution, but the gate, the restaurants, and the cultural associations survive. The Callejón de Hamel, a narrow alley covered in Afro-Cuban murals and sculptures by artist Salvador González Escalona, is Centro Habana's most visited cultural site — the Sunday Rumba sessions here are among the most authentic musical experiences in the city.

Walking Centro Habana requires accepting the neighbourhood on its own terms — the buildings are gorgeous and collapsing, the streets are loud and social, and the experience of being a visitor in a neighbourhood where most people are too busy living to perform for tourists provides the most honest encounter with contemporary Cuban life available in the city.