Top 10 Things to Do in Havana

The Malecon is Havana's defining public space — an 8-kilometre seafront promenade along the Straits of Florida where habaneros gather at all hours to fish, court, philosophize, play guitar, and watch waves crash over the low seawall in a spray that permanently salts and corrodes the extraordinary but crumbling buildings behind. Built between 1901 and 1952 during successive waves of optimistic urbanization, the Malecon's buildings represent every Cuban architectural style from neoclassical to Art Deco to modernist, all melting together in the salt air in a visual narrative of a century of Cuban history. At sunset the seawall fills with hundreds of couples and the whole of Havana seems to congregate here.

The Museum of the Revolution occupies the former Presidential Palace of Cuba — a lavish 1920 building whose gold-and-marble staterooms were decorated by Tiffany and Co. and later riddled with bullet holes during the 1957 student attack on Batista. The museum's chronological exhibition of Cuban revolutionary history from colonial times to the present is the most comprehensive and ideologically confident of its kind in Latin America, presented entirely in Spanish in a collection of remarkable photographs, weapons, uniforms, and personal effects. In the garden behind the museum sits the Granma yacht — the 60-foot cabin cruiser that carried Fidel Castro and 81 guerrillas from Mexico to Cuba in December 1956 — preserved under a glass canopy.

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 neighbourhood — the Jaimanitas fishing village suburb that artist Jose Fuster has spent over 40 years transforming into a mosaic-tiled fantasy of Gaudi-esque ceramic artwork covering not just his own house but the entire surrounding streetscape of 80-plus neighbouring homes, benches, columns, and public spaces in an explosion of primary colours, cartoon figures, Cuban iconography, and abstract patterns. Fuster, who calls himself "The Picasso of the Caribbean," began with his own house in the 1990s and gradually absorbed the whole neighbourhood with the enthusiastic cooperation of his neighbours. It is the most concentrated single-artist public art project in the Americas and entirely free to visit.

Fabrica de Arte Cubano (FAC) opened in 2014 in a repurposed 1910 olive oil factory in Vedado and has become one of the world's great cultural spaces — a multi-room labyrinth where contemporary art exhibitions, cinema screenings, fashion shows, DJ stages, and live performance areas operate simultaneously every Thursday to Sunday night, drawing Havana's creative class alongside international visitors. FAC was created by musician X Alfonso to give Cuban artists a space to exhibit and perform without bureaucratic restriction, and its combination of visual art and electronic music has created a culture night unlike any other in the Caribbean. Entry costs one Cuban peso and the queues begin forming at 8pm.

Plaza Vieja (Old Square) is Old Havana's most architecturally diverse public square — a 16th-century plaza surrounded by buildings from every period of Cuban colonial and republican history, recently restored to its original appearance after decades as a car park. The square's four sides display Baroque, neoclassical, Art Nouveau, and early modernist facades whose pastel-painted ironwork balconies, arcaded ground floors, and stained-glass mamparas create a composition of enormous beauty. Today the plaza is home to a craft beer microbrewery in one corner, a photographic gallery, a rooftop planetarium, and several excellent restaurants that spill onto the cobblestones.

La Bodeguita del Medio is one of the most famous bars in the world — a tiny 1942 tavern on a colonial alley off Plaza de la Catedral whose walls are entirely covered in carved, painted, and written graffiti signatures of the thousands of writers, musicians, politicians, and travellers who have drunk here over eight decades. Ernest Hemingway inscribed his famous dictum "My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita" on the wall, and the bar has made the mojito — its house cocktail — a global institution. The bar is loud, cramped, and permanently crowded, but the mojitos are still made to the same recipe and the atmosphere is irreducibly Cuban.

Tropicana Cabaret has operated continuously since 1939 in an outdoor garden stage in the Marianao suburb, presenting the most elaborate Caribbean cabaret show in the world — a two-hour spectacular of 200 costumed performers, live orchestras, acrobats, and dancers under the open sky and the famous "ballet under the stars" stage designed by Max Borges Jr. in 1951. The Tropicana survived the revolution, two hurricanes, and the Special Period economic collapse and remains as glamorous and extravagant today as it was in the 1950s heyday when Meyer Lansky and the Rat Pack made it their playground. Dress code is enforced; the run-of-show never changes; and nothing in Cuba feels more timelessly spectacular.

Callejon de Hamel is a narrow alley in the Centro Habana neighbourhood that artist Salvador Gonzalez has spent over 30 years transforming into the most extraordinary gallery of Afro-Cuban religious art in Havana — painting the walls, gates, and even the ground with vivid murals depicting Santeria orishas, Abakua symbols, and African cosmological imagery in a continuous ever-evolving artwork that covers every surface for two city blocks. Every Sunday from noon to 3pm the alley hosts live rumba music and dancing that provides a direct connection to Cuba's African cultural heritage far beyond tourist performance. The site functions as both an outdoor gallery and an active spiritual space.

The Malecon is Havana's defining public space — an 8-kilometre seafront promenade along the Straits of Florida where habaneros gather at all hours to fish, court, philosophize, play guitar, and watch waves crash over the low seawall in a spray that permanently salts and corrodes the extraordinary but crumbling buildings behind. Built between 1901 and 1952 during successive waves of optimistic urbanization, the Malecon's buildings represent every Cuban architectural style from neoclassical to Art Deco to modernist, all melting together in the salt air in a visual narrative of a century of Cuban history. At sunset the seawall fills with hundreds of couples and the whole of Havana seems to congregate here.

The Museum of the Revolution occupies the former Presidential Palace of Cuba — a lavish 1920 building whose gold-and-marble staterooms were decorated by Tiffany and Co. and later riddled with bullet holes during the 1957 student attack on Batista. The museum's chronological exhibition of Cuban revolutionary history from colonial times to the present is the most comprehensive and ideologically confident of its kind in Latin America, presented entirely in Spanish in a collection of remarkable photographs, weapons, uniforms, and personal effects. In the garden behind the museum sits the Granma yacht — the 60-foot cabin cruiser that carried Fidel Castro and 81 guerrillas from Mexico to Cuba in December 1956 — preserved under a glass canopy.

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 neighbourhood — the Jaimanitas fishing village suburb that artist Jose Fuster has spent over 40 years transforming into a mosaic-tiled fantasy of Gaudi-esque ceramic artwork covering not just his own house but the entire surrounding streetscape of 80-plus neighbouring homes, benches, columns, and public spaces in an explosion of primary colours, cartoon figures, Cuban iconography, and abstract patterns. Fuster, who calls himself "The Picasso of the Caribbean," began with his own house in the 1990s and gradually absorbed the whole neighbourhood with the enthusiastic cooperation of his neighbours. It is the most concentrated single-artist public art project in the Americas and entirely free to visit.

Fabrica de Arte Cubano (FAC) opened in 2014 in a repurposed 1910 olive oil factory in Vedado and has become one of the world's great cultural spaces — a multi-room labyrinth where contemporary art exhibitions, cinema screenings, fashion shows, DJ stages, and live performance areas operate simultaneously every Thursday to Sunday night, drawing Havana's creative class alongside international visitors. FAC was created by musician X Alfonso to give Cuban artists a space to exhibit and perform without bureaucratic restriction, and its combination of visual art and electronic music has created a culture night unlike any other in the Caribbean. Entry costs one Cuban peso and the queues begin forming at 8pm.

Plaza Vieja (Old Square) is Old Havana's most architecturally diverse public square — a 16th-century plaza surrounded by buildings from every period of Cuban colonial and republican history, recently restored to its original appearance after decades as a car park. The square's four sides display Baroque, neoclassical, Art Nouveau, and early modernist facades whose pastel-painted ironwork balconies, arcaded ground floors, and stained-glass mamparas create a composition of enormous beauty. Today the plaza is home to a craft beer microbrewery in one corner, a photographic gallery, a rooftop planetarium, and several excellent restaurants that spill onto the cobblestones.

La Bodeguita del Medio is one of the most famous bars in the world — a tiny 1942 tavern on a colonial alley off Plaza de la Catedral whose walls are entirely covered in carved, painted, and written graffiti signatures of the thousands of writers, musicians, politicians, and travellers who have drunk here over eight decades. Ernest Hemingway inscribed his famous dictum "My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita" on the wall, and the bar has made the mojito — its house cocktail — a global institution. The bar is loud, cramped, and permanently crowded, but the mojitos are still made to the same recipe and the atmosphere is irreducibly Cuban.

Tropicana Cabaret has operated continuously since 1939 in an outdoor garden stage in the Marianao suburb, presenting the most elaborate Caribbean cabaret show in the world — a two-hour spectacular of 200 costumed performers, live orchestras, acrobats, and dancers under the open sky and the famous "ballet under the stars" stage designed by Max Borges Jr. in 1951. The Tropicana survived the revolution, two hurricanes, and the Special Period economic collapse and remains as glamorous and extravagant today as it was in the 1950s heyday when Meyer Lansky and the Rat Pack made it their playground. Dress code is enforced; the run-of-show never changes; and nothing in Cuba feels more timelessly spectacular.

Callejon de Hamel is a narrow alley in the Centro Habana neighbourhood that artist Salvador Gonzalez has spent over 30 years transforming into the most extraordinary gallery of Afro-Cuban religious art in Havana — painting the walls, gates, and even the ground with vivid murals depicting Santeria orishas, Abakua symbols, and African cosmological imagery in a continuous ever-evolving artwork that covers every surface for two city blocks. Every Sunday from noon to 3pm the alley hosts live rumba music and dancing that provides a direct connection to Cuba's African cultural heritage far beyond tourist performance. The site functions as both an outdoor gallery and an active spiritual space.