Museum sights in Cuba
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Museo de la Lucha Clandestina
This gorgeous colonial-style building houses the Museo de la Lucha Clandestina, detailing the underground struggle against Batista in the 1950s. It’s a fascinating, if macabre, story enhanced by far-reaching views from the balcony.
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Museo de la Revolución
The Museo de la Revolución is housed in the former Presidential Palace, constructed between 1913 and 1920 and used by a string of cash-embezzling Cuban presidents, culminating in Fulgencio Batista. The world-famous Tiffany’s of New York decorated the interior, and the shimmering Salón de los Espejos (Room of Mirrors) was designed to resemble the room of the same name at the Palace of Versailles. In March 1957 the palace was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Batista led by revolutionary student leader José Antonio Echeverría. The museum itself descends chronologically from the top floor starting with Cuba’s pre-Columbian culture and extending to …
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Museo–Casa Natal de Antonio Maceo
Two long blocks northwest of the church, Iglesia de Santo Tomás, is the important but little visited Museo–Casa Natal de Antonio Maceo where the mulato general and hero of both Wars of Independence was born on June 14, 1845. Known as the Bronze Titan in Cuba for his bravery in battle, Maceo was the definitive ‘man of action’ to Martí’s ‘man of ideas.’ In his 1878 Protest of Baraguá, he rejected any compromise with the colonial authorities and went into exile rather than sell out to the Spanish. Landing at Playa Duaba in 1895, he marched his army as far west as Pinar del Río before being killed in action near Havana in 1896. This simple museum exhibits highl…
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Museo Hemingway
The villa’s interior has remained unchanged since the day Hemingway left (there are lots of stuffed trophies), and the wooded estate is now the Museo Hemingway. Hemingway left his house and its contents to the ‘Cuban people, ’ and his house has recently been the stimulus for a rare show of US-Cuban cooperation. In 2002 the Cubans agreed to a US-funded project to digitalize the documents stored in the basement of Finca La Vigía, and in May 2006 Cuba sent 11,000 of Hemingway’s private documents to the JFK Presidential Library in America for digitalization. This literary treasure trove (including a previously unseen epilogue for For Whom the Bell Tolls ) was finally…
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Museo Histórico Municipal
The showpiece museum here is the grandiose Museo Histórico Municipal, just off Plaza Mayor, housed in a mansion that belonged to the Borrell family from 1827 to 1830. Later the building passed to a German planter named Kanter or Cantero, and it’s still called Casa Cantero. Reputedly Dr Justo Cantero acquired vast sugar estates by poisoning an old slave trader and marrying his widow, who also suffered an untimely death. Cantero’s ill-gotten wealth is well displayed in the stylish neoclassical decoration of the rooms. The view of Trinidad from the top of the tower alone is worth the price of admission. Visit before 11am, when the tour buses start rolling in.
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Palacio de Gobierno Y Vagón Mambí
This eclectic palace on Calle Oficios was the former seat of the Cuban government from 1902 until 1929 (when the Capitolio was completed). Furnished with decorative baroque details and an Italian marble floor, the museum contains a parliament room, the former president’s office and the original Cuban flag used by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. To the side of the building on Churruca is the Vagón Mambí, a train car built in the US in 1900 and brought to Cuba in 1912. Put into service as the presidential car, it’s a palace on wheels, with a formal dining room, louvered wooden windows and, back in its heyday, fans that cooled the car with dry ice.
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Fundación Naturaleza y El Hombre
The fascinating museum at the Fundación Naturaleza y El Hombre displays artifacts from the 17,422km canoe trip from the Amazon source to sea led by Cuban intellectual and anthropologist Antonio Nuñez Jiménez in 1987. Other exhibits in the truly astounding museum include one of Cuba’s largest photography collections, books written by the prolific Nuñez Jiménez, the famous Fidel portrait by Guayasamín stalactites, and ‘the glass house’ – glass cases containing all kinds of intriguing ephemera from the founder’s life. The museum is a foundation and one of Havana’s most rewarding.
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Museo Carlos Finlay
Named after Cuba’s most famous scientist, this engaging museum on Calle Cuba is also home to the Academia de Ciencias Médicas, Físicas y Naturales (Academy of Medical, Physical & Natural Sciences). A physician of French and Scottish descent, Finlay (1833–1915) was the first scientist to identify the mosquito as the organism that caused yellow fever. Later on he became Cuba’s chief medical officer and a respected figure within the Latin American scientific community. The museum displays numerous busts and paintings related to the scientist’s remarkable life, along with a stash of over 95,000 medical books.
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Museo de la Ciudad
Since 1968 Palacio de los Capitanes Generales has been home to the Museo de la Ciudad, one of Havana’s most comprehensive and interesting museums that wraps its way regally around a splendid central courtyard adorned with a white marble statue of Christopher Columbus (1862). Artifacts include period furniture, military uniforms and old-fashioned 19th-century horse carriages, while old photos vividly re- create events from Havana’s rich history such as the 1898 sinking of US battleship Maine in the harbor. It’s better to body-swerve the pushy attendants and wander around at your own pace.
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San Francisco de Asís
Perhaps the most recognizable building in Trinidad is the quaint yellow bell-tower of the former convent of San Francisco de Asís. Since 1986 the building has housed the Museo Nacional de la Lucha Contra Bandidos (tel:4121, open from 09:00 to 18:00 Tuesday to Sunday).
The displays are mostly photos, maps, weapons and other objects relating to the struggle against the various counterrevolutionary bands that operated in Sierra del Escambray between 1960 and 1965. The fuselage of a US U-2 spy plane shot down over Cuba is also on display. Here, too, you can climb the tower for good views. It's on the corner of Piro Guinart.
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Museo Napoleónico
An anomaly – but an interesting one – is the esoteric Museo Napoleónico situated just outside the university walls. It’s a collection of 7000 objects associated with the life of Napoleon Bonaparte amassed by Cuban sugar baron Julio Lobo and politician Orestes Ferrera. Highlights include sketches of Voltaire, paintings of the battle of Waterloo, china, furniture, an interesting recreation of Napoleon’s study and bedroom, and one of several bronze Napoleonic death masks made two days after the emperor’s death by his personal physician, Dr Francisco Antommarchi.
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Museo Nacional de la Lucha Contra Bandidos
Perhaps the most recognizable building in Trinidad is the withered pastel-yellow bell-tower of the former convent of San Francisco de Asís. Since 1986 the building has housed the Museo Nacional de la Lucha Contra Bandidos. The displays are mostly photos, maps, weapons and other objects relating to the struggle against the various counterrevolutionary bands that took a leaf out of Fidel’s book and operated illicitly out of the Sierra del Escambray between 1960 and 1965. The fuselage of a US U-2 spy plane shot down over Cuba is also on display. You can climb the tower for good views.
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Museo Municipal Emilio Bacardí Moreau
Narrow Pío Rosado links Calle Heredia to Calle Aguilera and the fabulous Grecian facade of the Museo Municipal Emilio Bacardí Moreau. Founded in 1899 by the rum magnate/war hero/city mayor, Emilio Bacardí y Moreau (the palatial building was built to spec), the museum is one of Cuba’s oldest and most eclectic. Artifacts amassed from Bacardí’s travels include an extensive weapons collection, paintings from the Spanish costumbrismo (19th-century artistic movement that predated Romanticism) school and the only Egyptian mummy on the island.
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Museo de Arte Religioso
The southern side of the square is taken up by the impressive Iglesia y Monasterio deSan Franciscode Asís. Originally constructed in 1608 and rebuilt in the baroque style from 1719 to 1738, San Francisco de Asís was taken over by the Spanish state in 1841 as part of a political move against the powerful religious orders of the day, when it ceased to be a church. Today it’s both a concert hall hosting classical music and the Museo de Arte Religioso replete with religious paintings, silverware, woodcarvings and ceramics.
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Fundación de la Naturaleza y EI Hombre
Replicating its equally diminutive namesake in Miramar, Havana, the Fundación de la Naturaleza y El Hombre on Parque Maceo chronicles the 17,422km canoe odyssey ‘from the Amazon to the Caribbean’ in 1987 led by Cuban writer and Renaissance man Antonio Nuñez Jiménez (1923–98). Some 432 explorers made the journey through 10 countries, from Ecuador to the Bahamas, in the twin dugout canoes Simón Bolívar and Hatuey. The latter measures over 13m and is the collection’s central, prized piece.
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Cuidad Escolar 26 de Julio Museum
In 1960, after the triumph of the revolution, the Moncada Barracks, like all barracks in Cuba, were converted into a school called Cuidad Escolar 26 de Julio, and in 1967 a museum was installed near gate No 3, where the main attack took place. Bastista's soldiers cemented over the original bullet holes from the attack so the Castro government remade them (this time without guns) after the revolution as a poignant reminder.
The museum outlines the history of Cuba from the Spanish conquest to the present, with heavy emphasis on the revolution, and it's one of Cuba's best.
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Museo Arqueológico
Baracoa’s newest and most impressive museum is the Museo Arqueológico, situated in Las Cuevas del Paraíso 800m southeast of the Hotel El Castillo. The exhibits here are showcased in a series of caves that once acted as Taíno burial chambers. Among nearly 2000 authentic Taíno pieces are unearthed skeletons, ceramics, 3000-year-old petroglyphs and a replica of the Ídolo de Tabaco, a sculpture found in Maisí in 1903 that is considered to be one of the most important Taíno finds in the Caribbean. One of the staff will enthusiastically show you around.
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Museo Ñico López
The Museo Ñico López is in the former officers’ club of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes military barracks. On July 26, 1953, this garrison was attacked by 25 revolutionaries in tandem with the assault on Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba in order to prevent reinforcements from being sent. Though a failure, Ñico López, who led the Bayamo attack, escaped to Guatemala, and he was the first Cuban to befriend Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in 1954. López was killed shortly after the Granma landed in 1956.
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Museo Municipal de Guanabacoa
The town’s main sight is the freshly renovated Museo Municipal de Guanabacoa, two blocks west of Parque Martí. Founded in 1964, it tracks the development of the neighborhood throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and is famous for its rooms on Afro-Cuban culture, slavery and the Santería religion with a particular focus on the orisha Elegguá. The museum has another arm further west along Calle Martí in the Museo de Mártires, which displays material relevant to the Cuban Revolution.
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Parque Histórico Abel Santamaría
The Parque Histórico Abel Santamaría is the site of the former Saturnino Lora Civil Hospital, stormed by Abel Santamaría and 60 others on that fateful July day. On October 16, 1953, Fidel Castro was tried in the Escuela de Enfermeras for leading the Moncada attack. It was here that he made his famous History Will Absolve Me speech. The park contains a giant cubist fountain engraved with the countenances of Abel Santamaría and José Martí that gushes out a veritable Niagara Falls of water.
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Museo Municipal
The Fuerte Matachín (1802) at the southern entrance to town, now houses the Museo Municipal. Though small, this museum showcases an engaging chronology of Cuba’s oldest settlement including polymita snail shells, the story of Che Guevara and the chocolate factory, and exhibits relating to pouty Magdalena Menasse (née Rovieskuya, ‘La Rusa’) after whom Alejo Carpentier based his famous book, La Consagración de la Primavera (The Rite of Spring).
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Museo Municipal de Regla
You'd do well to check out this quirky Museo Municipal de Regla, which is spread over two sites, one adjacent to a church and the other (better half) a couple of blocks up the main street from the ferry. Recording the history of Regla and its Afro-Cuban religions, there’s an interesting, small exhibit on Remigio Herrero, first babalawo (priest) of Regla, and a bizarre statue of Napoleon with his nose missing. Price of admission includes both museum outposts and the Colina Lenin exhibit.
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Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta museum
Across the Malecón is the picturesque Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta, designed by the Italian military engineer Giovanni Bautista Antonelli and built between 1589 and 1600. During the colonial era a chain was stretched 250m to the castle of El Morro every night to close the harbor mouth to shipping. The castle's museum was renovated in 2002 and displays artifacts from sunken Spanish treasure fleets, a collection of model ships and information on the slave trade.
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Museo de Simón Bolívar
A diminutive museum dedicated to Latin America’s great liberator, who remains a perennial hero to most Cubans. Downstairs there are panels containing text in English, French and Spanish that describe Bolívar’s life and his many accomplishments. Upstairs there’s a reproduction of his sword, a coin minted in his honor and paintings of him by contemporary artists. There is a bronze statue of Simón Bolívar in a small park across the road.
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Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta
Designed by the Italian engineer Giovanni Bautista Antonelli and built between 1589 and 1600, this fort is a fine example of 16th-century Renaissance military architecture. In days of yore, a chain was stretched 250m to the castle of El Morro on the other side of the channel every night to close the harbor mouth to shipping. The castle’s museum displays artifacts from sunken Spanish treasure fleets, a collection of model ships and information on the slave trade.
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