Havana Guide

Havana is probably the most exciting city in Latin America managing to be both seedy and stylish. The Havana province owes its growth and prosperity to the almost natural perfection of its harbour. The Spanish, in the course of their conquest of Central and Latin America, earmarked the city as the ideal stopping-off point for their ships. In order to protect their vessels from English, French and Dutch attack, the Spanish built a wall around the city and constructed huge fortresses at the entrance to the harbour.

As Cuba’s political and economic center, it has become a museum to a broken communist dream, yet it is much more than just that: it is the focus of Cuba’s youth culture; the place where you’ll find the most magnificent hotels and the liveliest discotheques, where the Revolution seems to have come full circle and, uncannily, recreated the absurdly decadent world of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana.

Havana is an exhilarating place, but it can also be exhausting. There is a neurotic, anxious edge to life here, quite unlike anything you’ll find in the rest of Cuba.

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