Havana

Why Havana works

Havana's old town, La Habana Vieja, is a UNESCO-listed grid of Spanish colonial plazas, baroque churches, and balconied townhouses in every stage of restoration and decay, often on the same block. Classic American cars from the 1950s — kept running for seven decades through improvisation rather than nostalgia — double as taxis, their owners happy to cruise the Malecon seafront promenade for a fixed fare and a sea breeze. Plaza Vieja, Plaza de la Catedral, and Plaza de Armas each hold their own character: outdoor cafes, a baroque cathedral facade, and a secondhand book market respectively. Live music is not a tourist performance here so much as background radiation — son, salsa, and Buena Vista Social Club-era standards drift from bars like La Bodeguita del Medio, a Hemingway haunt still serving mojitos to a soundtrack of clave rhythm. Centro Habana's more weathered streets reveal the city's ongoing negotiation between preservation and decline, with laundry strung between crumbling balconies and children playing baseball with taped-up bats. The Museo de la Revolucion, housed in the former presidential palace, tracks the 1959 revolution through bullet-scarred walls and propaganda art, while cigar factories around the city offer tours ending, inevitably, at a shop. Havana runs on cash, patience, and charm — infrastructure gaps are real, but they rarely dent the city's theatrical, unrepeatable atmosphere.

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