LITMIR.BIZ

      My favorite of all is Plaza Vieja, a wide-open square lined with colonnaded buildings hiding interesting sites. There’s a luthier workshop, Fototeca (the national photo gallery), Cuba’s only camera obscura providing live, 360° views of the neighborhood—sheets flapping on the line, dogs wagging their tails—and various places to appreciate the best in Cuban contemporary art, including the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, a fine art gallery housed in a beautiful colonial mansion. For good people watching and refreshments, there’s a microbrewery on one corner of the plaza and a cafe on another—the whole bean coffee here makes a special gift or souvenir; both places have outside tables. Heading northeast, you hit Plaza de San Francisco de Asis, nicknamed “pigeon plaza” by Cubans who like to come here and whip the birds into a feeding frenzy around the central fountain. Anchoring this irregularly shaped plaza is the Lonja de Comercio, a luxurious office building housing international press bureaus, joint ventures, and apartments like you might find in Manhattan. Looking up is always a good way to pull back the veil on Havana’s charms: across the plaza is the Basilica de San Francisco de Asis, built in 1719 and adorned with one of the highest bell towers—it flirts with 125 feet—in the hemisphere. Once the house of worship for the city’s elite, these days the Basilica is a classical concert hall and headquarters of Ars Longa, the national baroque orchestra. International musicians are often invited to play here and if you get the chance to attend a performance among the gilded angels and the fabulous trompe l’oeil backdrop, grab it. Guarding the entrance here is a statue of the Caballero de Paris, a brilliant, but tormented fellow who wandered the streets of Habana Vieja reciting prose and poetry, dying in poverty but immortalized in bronze. Stroking his beard and making a wish is a Havana tradition long observed, which is why it shines so brightly.

      A few blocks north is the Plaza de Armas. Originally established in 1582, it’s the oldest square in Cuba. Among its quirky attributes is the only wooden street in Havana (in front of the Museo de la Ciudad), the antique book bazaar ringing the central park, and the statue of La Giraldilla, the symbol of Havana crowning the ornate roof of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza (and emblazoned on every bottle of Havana Club rum); this is the hemisphere’s oldest colonial fort. On the northeast corner of this plaza is El Templete, a neo-classical pantheon celebrating the place where Havana was founded in 1519. In reality, the ceiba tree—an important symbol to Cubans the world over—spreading its crown over El Templete is what actually marks the spot of the first mass in Havana and the founding of the city. But like much in Cuba, even this symbolic tree is a trick: city authorities have cut down and replanted ceibas here repeatedly, as recently as 2016 when the previous tree was confirmed to be termite-infested (the metaphor was not lost on locals). No matter for superstitious Cubans married to their traditions: every November 16, people stand in line for hours to take three turns around the tree, intoning wishes for health, wealth, or a visa. Finally, two blocks northeast of here is the Plaza de la Catedral, site of Havana’s baroque cathedral, built between 1748 and 1787. It’s prettiest at night, when the crowds slip away and the unequal towers and facade are softly lit. At other times, it’s clogged with tourists snapping photos of Cuban women smoking cigars so tourists will snap photos of them (for a fee) and people making their way to El Bodeguita del Medio for an overpriced, watered-down mojito. For me, the most interesting places to visit around this plaza are the Taller Experimental de Gráfica (see Chapter 19) in a small alley off the southwestern corner where Cuban printmakers are hard at work creating under bright lights, the air thick with the smell of ink and sweat, and the Centro Wilfredo Lam (headquarters of the Bienal de la Habana; see Chapter 8), a contemporary art gallery named for and featuring Cuba’s most celebrated artist. Known in art circles as a “tropical surrealist,” Lam is the quintessential Cuban mongrel—an exotic mix of Chinese, African, and Criollo (those of Spanish descent born in Cuba). I’m surprised there isn’t a cocktail named after him. Having one of the best galleries in the city bearing his name is honor enough.

      LA HABANA VIEJA—LITERALLY OLD HAVANA, THE first permanent settlement in the city, dating from 1519—is the number one tourist attraction in the country, though I predict its status will be challenged by Fidel Castro’s grave in Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba (see Chapter 71). Wandering the cobblestone streets linking colonial plazas, each one more picturesque than the last, is a lesson in history; branch off and out of the painstakingly restored areas (what Cuban’s call “Disneyland” for obvious reasons) and into the ’hood, however, and an entirely different world unfolds. Here, laundry hangs listlessly from balconies held up by wooden scaffolding, chunks of mortar crash to the sidewalk too often, shirtless men crowd tables under streetlamps shouting as they slap down dominos, and exhausted housewives haul buckets of water to third floor apartments via a rope and pulley system. In this part of town, running water is only available every other day, few people have air conditioning, and the daily struggle is defined by how families are going to put food on the table. In short, Habana Vieja is a tale of two cities. For insight into the historical context that has resulted in the grand contradictions evident today—luxurious colonial palaces next to falling down tenements; well-heeled Cubans and tourists sidestepping mounds of household garbage; the sound of lobster sizzling on the grill mixing with the knife sharpener’s peal—the area known as La Loma del Ángel, behind the Iglesia del Santo Ángel Custodio (1847), is a good place to start.

      Just a handful of years ago, this pocket neighborhood exemplified the dichotomy of modern-day Havana, with boarded up state stores and bakeries cheek-by-jowl with new colonizers including moneyed artists and designers, huge potholes in streets running alongside freshly painted homes, and nary a tourist in sight. Some people would venture to the church where José Martí was baptized and where the first (and to date, still most famous) novel exploring interracial dynamics, Cecilia Valdés (1882) is set, but few ventured beyond.

      Cecilia Valdes by Cirilo Villaverde is the story of a beautiful mulatta and her star-crossed romance with a young white man of means, who unbeknownst to either, is her half-brother.

      Today, the little hillside neighborhood of La Loma del Ángel is a tourist attraction. The cobblestone streets are completely repaired and closed to traffic, little sidewalk cafés with chic umbrellas serve crepes and fruit salads, there are no lack of artists’ studios where visitors can browse and buy, and the cultural events organized by Papito and ArteCorte (see Chapter 42, Playgrounds, for other initiatives by this socially responsible business) are a spontaneous carnival. Just a few blocks outside of this enclave is where the real Habana Vieja lives.

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