Fusterlandia (José Fuster's Art Project)

Fusterlandia is one of the most extraordinary public art projects in the world — a neighbourhood in Jaimanitas (a fishing village west of central Havana) that artist José Fuster has been transforming since the 1990s by covering every available surface — his house, his neighbours' houses, bus stops, park benches, walls, and entire street blocks — in colourful mosaic tilework that draws from Gaudí, Picasso, and Cuban folk art in a style that is joyful, excessive, and completely unique.

Fuster's project began with his own home and studio and has expanded over three decades to encompass the surrounding blocks, creating a neighbourhood where every surface — doorways, rooftops, fences, even the doctor's office — is covered in mosaic. The imagery is a mix of Cuban political symbolism (revolutionary slogans rendered in tile), Caribbean nature (fish, palm trees, the sea), and Fuster's own imagination (fantastical creatures, abstract patterns, and the ceramic figures that populate every flat surface).

Fusterlandia is free to explore (Fuster's studio and gallery charge a small admission), and the experience of walking through a neighbourhood that has been transformed from ordinary concrete houses into a continuous work of art is unlike anything available in any other city. The project is about 30 minutes from central Havana by taxi, and the journey — through the residential suburbs of western Havana — provides context for the ordinary neighbourhood that Fuster has made extraordinary.