The more modern Cuban collection is across the street from the Granma Memorial, while the international collection is housed off Parque Central in a building that once belonged to a wealthy private society, complete with a grand ballroom, marble staircases, and stained-glass ceiling. If you’d rather look at paintings of blood than bloody shirts, the Museo de las Bellas Artes has two buildings of collections-Cuban and international-you can see for the price of a combined ticket. Havana’s topsy-turvy urban landscape, sometimes crumbling and sometimes gleaming, has this one consistency: it’s very much alive and in use. Wherever you go, though, there’s something worth looking at: whether a beautifully preserved church or a bucket-and-pulley system for exchanging items between upper and lower floors. Some blocks look straight out of a photoshoot, others like a half-completed construction site. The contrast between spaces dominated by Cubans, and those reserved for visitors, is particularly noticeable here, where everything is so close together. As both the oldest and the most walkable part of the city, it’s also a popular place to stay for many visitors. (Never forget that pirates are real.) Though the walls were knocked down in 1863 to make way for the city’s expansion, the difference between more modern neighborhoods like Vedado-full of broad, shaded avenues and stately mansions on roomy plots-and Old Havana is striking.
The ancient heart of the Caribbean’s largest city, Old Havana’s (or Habana Vieja’s) original street plan was squeezed on one side by its harbor and on the other by heavily fortified walls. Old Havana’s streets are narrower than a broad alleyway and almost as old as Columbus.
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