Cuba

🇨🇺 Cuba

Havana

Havana is the Cuban capital and the Western Hemisphere's most cinematically preserved colonial city — 2.1 million people living in a city that time, economics, and ideology have held in partial suspension since 1959. La Habana Vieja (Old Havana, UNESCO World Heritage Site, 1982) is 4 square kilometres of Spanish colonial and baroque architecture in various states of repair from crumbling splendour to freshly restored, threaded by narrow cobblestone streets where 1950s American cars (the almendrones — 'almonds', named for their shape; Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles, Studebakers, Buicks, kept running by Cuban mechanical ingenuity because no new parts were available) serve as collective taxis. Ernest Hemingway drank in the El Floridita bar (his frozen daiquiri seat still has a bronze statue) and wrote Old Man and the Sea in a house outside the city that is now a museum. The Malecón (the 8km seafront road, crumbling, salt-bleached, where Habaneros gather at sunset to drink rum and watch the ocean) is the most melancholic urban promenade in the Americas. Best months: November–April (dry season, 24–28°C, low humidity).

🇨🇺 Cuba

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is the capital of Santiago de Cuba Province and the second-largest city in Cuba — a city of 445,000 on the southern coast of Oriente province, 860 km east of Havana across the full length of Cuba, at the foot of the Sierra Maestra mountains and on the shores of a deep landlocked bay. Santiago is the "Heroic City" of Cuba — the most politically charged city in Cuban history: Fidel Castro was born in Birán, 110 km north of Santiago; the first shot of the Cuban Revolution was fired at the Moncada Barracks in Santiago on July 26, 1953 (the failed attack that launched the revolutionary movement, gives the July 26 Movement its name, and provided the date that Cubans use to celebrate their revolution); the revolution culminated on January 1, 1959 when Fidel Castro gave his first speech as the victorious revolutionary commander from the balcony of the Santiago City Hall. Santiago is also the most African-influenced city in Cuba — the Santiago Carnival (the most important carnival in Cuba, held in late July as the city-wide celebration of the July 26 anniversary), the son music (Santiago is the birthplace of son — the Cuban musical genre that evolved into salsa, with the trova poets of the Casa de la Trova, and the groups that defined Cuban popular music for a century), the Santería religion (the Afro-Cuban syncretic religion of the Lucumí/Yoruba tradition), and the cuisine all reflect the strongest African heritage of any Cuban city. Santiago is UNESCO Creative City of Music (2015). The Castillo del Morro (the 17th-century Spanish fortress on the entrance to the Santiago bay, UNESCO World Heritage together with the Old Havana Morro castle) and the Basílica de El Cobre (the most important Catholic pilgrimage site in Cuba — the shrine of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba, whose statue was found floating in the bay in 1612) are the most visited sites near the city.