Plaza Vieja

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). The buildings surrounding the square span four centuries of Cuban architecture — Renaissance, Baroque, neoclassical, and Art Nouveau facades painted in the pastel colours that distinguish Cuban colonial architecture from its more sombre Spanish models.

The square now houses the Fototeca de Cuba (the national photography archive), the Camera Obscura (a tower-mounted optical device that projects a live panoramic image of Havana onto a concave screen), a microbrewery (Factoria Plaza Vieja, serving the only craft beer in a country where commercial beer dominates), and the restaurants and cafés that fill the plaza's arcaded ground floors. The restoration, led by the City Historian's Office, is a model of heritage conservation that balances authenticity with the commercial activity needed to fund ongoing maintenance.

Plaza Vieja's residential upper floors — the balconied apartments above the shops — remain occupied by Habaneros, which gives the square a lived-in quality that purely commercial restorations can't achieve. The sight of laundry hanging from the balconies of a restored Baroque palace is Havana's most characteristic image — beauty and domesticity coexisting without apology.