Famous Landmarks in Havana
Colonial forts and churches share Havana's harbour with a 1920s neoclassical capitol.
Havana's surviving landmarks span nearly four centuries around a single harbour. The walled colonial core, Old Havana, holds the city's oldest stone building: a sixteenth-century bastion fort that proved too far inside the bay to defend it and was turned into a governor's residence instead. Nearby stands a baroque cathedral, built through the mid- and late eighteenth century on a compact rectangular plan, its stone facade fronting a small square. Both belong to the fortified Spanish port that grew up around the harbour entrance. Away from that old town, a large neoclassical capitol was raised in the late 1920s as the seat of the legislature, built on a scale and in a style borrowed from government architecture elsewhere rather than from the colonial city around it.
El Capitolio
1926–1929 · Eugenio Rayneri Piedra
A large, strictly symmetrical neoclassical facade with a colonnaded entrance, built at a scale and formality that set it apart from the streets around it.
El Capitolio was commissioned by Cuban president Gerardo Machado and built between 1926 and 1929, under the direction of architect Eugenio Rayneri Piedra. Designed as a large neoclassical public building, it originally served as the seat of the Cuban legislature. It has since become the seat of the National Assembly of People's Power, continuing the same function within a different political system rather than being repurposed as a museum.
Photo: Yomangani (Public domain)
Havana Cathedral
1748–1777
A relatively small baroque church built of stone on a plain rectangular plan, thirty by forty-nine metres, forming one side of a modest square in the old town.
Havana Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Old Havana, seat of the Archdiocese of San Cristóbal de la Habana and one of eleven Catholic cathedrals on the island. It was built between 1748 and 1777 and consecrated in 1782. Faced in stone on a rectangular plan measuring thirty by forty-nine metres, it stands on the Plaza de la Catedral. Christopher Columbus's remains were kept inside between 1796 and 1898, before being taken to Seville Cathedral.
- For over a century, the church held remains believed to be those of Christopher Columbus, before they were moved to Seville Cathedral in Spain.
- It is one of eleven Catholic cathedrals on the island of Cuba.
Photo: Velvet (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Castillo de la Real Fuerza
1558–1577
A low, thick-walled stone bastion fort with angular corner bastions, set back from the harbour entrance and fronting a public square rather than the open sea.
Built as a defensive stronghold at the inner edge of Havana's harbour, the fort was intended to protect the city from pirate attack. Its position proved impractical: set too far back from the harbour mouth to intercept raiders, it was converted instead into the residence of the Governor of Havana. It is regarded as the oldest surviving stone fort in the Americas. In 1982 it was listed, together with the rest of Old Havana's fortifications, as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Photo: LBM1948 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
History
Havana was founded by the Spanish Empire in 1519 and, thanks to its harbour, overtook Santiago as the island's leading settlement by the mid-sixteenth century, becoming the colonial capital in 1552. Naval attack was a constant threat, and the crown answered with stone fortification: a bastion fort went up beside the harbour mouth, though it stood too far inside the bay to defend it and became a governor's residence instead. Religious building followed at a similar scale: the cathedral in what is now Old Havana was built between 1748 and 1777 and consecrated in 1782, its Baroque facade fronting a small colonial square. Only with the twentieth-century republic did Havana build on a different scale, raising in the late 1920s a neoclassical capitol sized to a modern legislature rather than a colonial garrison town.