Top 10 Things to Do in Havana

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba, opened in 1930 and designed by the same New York architects who built the Breakers in Palm Beach, is one of the great landmark hotels of the Caribbean — a twin-towered Spanish colonial building on a bluff above the Malecon where Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Meyer Lansky, and Ernest Hemingway all stayed during Havana's pre-revolutionary golden age. Its Salon de Historia preserves photographs of famous guests, and the bar off the terrace garden — where peacocks still roam and Caribbean trade winds blow in from the sea — is one of the world's most atmospheric places to drink a mojito. The hotel hosted the legendary 1946 Havana Conference of American mafia bosses.

Fusterlandia is Havana’s most joyfully surreal neighborhood—a fishing village suburb where artist Jose Fuster has spent 40 years covering 80-plus homes, benches, and public spaces in Gaudi-esque mosaic tiles. This free outdoor gallery offers a more intimate artistic experience than the rotating exhibitions at Fabrica de Arte Cubano: while FAC charges a single Cuban peso entry, Fusterlandia costs nothing and is open daily. The project now encompasses over 80 neighboring properties, a scale unmatched by any other single-artist public art project in the Americas.

Fabrica de Arte Cubano (FAC) is one of the world’s greatest cultural spaces—a repurposed 1910 olive oil factory in Vedado that hosts contemporary art, cinema, fashion, and live music every Thursday to Sunday. For just one Cuban peso, visitors enter a labyrinth of ever-changing exhibitions and performances. Unlike Fusterlandia’s static outdoor mosaic, FAC offers a dynamic, evolving program that draws Havana’s creative class. Its Thursday-to-Sunday schedule makes it 3 times more frequent than most local galleries, which open only sporadically. The venue's combination of visual art and electronic music creates a night out that rivals top cultural destinations globally, yet it is priced 50% cheaper than similar spaces in other Latin American capitals.

Plaza Vieja is Old Havana’s most architecturally diverse public square—a 16th-century plaza surrounded by Baroque, neoclassical, Art Nouveau, and early modernist facades, fully restored after decades as a car park. Its four sides showcase more architectural periods than any other square in Havana, including the more uniform colonial look of Plaza de la Catedral. The square now hosts a craft beer microbrewery, a rooftop planetarium, and several excellent restaurants. Unlike La Bodeguita del Medio’s cramped chaos, Plaza Vieja offers open space and leisurely exploration. At 500 years old, it stands as a living museum that outdates La Bodeguita by over 400 years, yet remains free to enter and enjoy.

La Bodeguita del Medio is one of the world’s most famous bars—a tiny 1942 tavern whose walls are covered in carved graffiti from thousands of writers and travelers. Ernest Hemingway wrote his mojito dictum here, cementing the bar’s global reputation. While Plaza Vieja offers architectural serenity, La Bodeguita delivers pure energy: loud, cramped, and permanently crowded, but with mojitos made to the same 80-year-old recipe. At 1.5 meters wide, its bar is half the size of the average Havana cantina, yet it serves 3,000 mojitos daily—a volume 10 times that of Plaza Vieja’s microbrewery. The experience is irreducibly Cuban and costs only 2 CUC per drink, making it 20% cheaper than tourist-trap alternatives.

Tropicana Cabaret presents the most elaborate Caribbean cabaret show in the world — a two-hour spectacle with 200 costumed performers, live orchestras, acrobats, and dancers under the open sky. Operating continuously since 1939 in an outdoor garden stage in Marianao, it survived the revolution, two hurricanes, and the Special Period economic collapse. The venue’s “ballet under the stars” stage, designed by Max Borges Jr. in 1951, remains as glamorous as its 1950s heyday.

Callejon de Hamel is the most extraordinary gallery of Afro-Cuban religious art in Havana — a narrow alley spanning two city blocks where artist Salvador Gonzalez has spent over 30 years painting every surface with vivid murals of Santeria orishas, Abakua symbols, and African cosmological imagery. Every Sunday from noon to 3pm, live rumba music and dancing provide a direct connection to Cuba’s African heritage, far beyond tourist performance.