Four days in Havana: the plazas are restored, the rest of the city is not
Three nights in Habana Vieja, almost all of it on foot, with one taxi out to Vedado on the way to the airport.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Havana
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
Havana was founded in 1519 and spent the next three hundred years as the port where Spain's treasure fleets gathered before the crossing home. That money paid for the squares, the cathedral and the ring of forts around the harbour mouth, and nearly all of it is still standing.
What makes the city strange and worth the flight is what happened next. The four main squares of Habana Vieja have been restored one facade at a time and they look it: repointed stone, new paint, cafe tables. Walk fifteen minutes west into Centro Habana and buildings of exactly the same age are propped up with timber, subdivided between several families, and full of people who live their whole evening on the front step because it is cooler out there. Both halves are the city, and seeing only the first one is the mistake most short visits make.
Three nights covers the old town properly, one long museum morning, and an evening across the water for the cannon. Everything except the last morning is within a half hour walk of the Capitolio, so the only vehicle you need is the taxi to the airport.
Highlights
- Plaza de Armas and the cathedral square, at their best early in the morning and again in the last hour of light
- The Royal Force Castle, a moated Spanish fort older than any other of its kind in the Americas
- The nightly cannon at La Cabaña, fired across the harbour at the old city
- The Museum of the Revolution, in the presidential palace the revolution took
- An early walk along the Malecón before the heat, when the sea wall belongs to fishermen
Where to stay
Havana, three nights
Sleep in Habana Vieja or on its western edge near the Prado. From there the cathedral, the harbour front and the Capitolio are all inside a twenty minute walk, and you can go back to the room in the worst of the afternoon heat instead of enduring it.
The old town is small enough that you will cross the same squares several times in three days. That is the point of staying inside it: the plazas look completely different at eight in the morning, at four in the afternoon and at ten at night, and only one of those versions has tour groups in it.
Day by day
Day 1 in Havana
Plaza de Armas and the cathedral square
Land, drop the bags, and give the first afternoon to two squares five minutes apart. Plaza de Armas was laid out in the 1600s as the administrative centre of Spanish Cuba and is still the shadiest square in the old town, ringed with second hand book stalls under the trees.
Five minutes west, the cathedral square is the one that ends up on the postcards: an eighteenth century baroque front in coral limestone, with one bell tower noticeably wider than the other. Go in if the doors are open, then take a table outside and watch the square empty out as the light goes.
- 16:00
Plaza de Armas
ArchitectureThe administrative heart of Spanish Cuba for three centuries, and the one square in Habana Vieja with real shade in it.
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- 17:00
Havana Cathedral
ReligiousBaroque, eighteenth century, cut from coral limestone with fossils visible in it, and fronting the smallest of the four squares.
- 18:30
La Bodeguita del Medio
OtherThe mojito bar every visitor is sent to, a block from the cathedral, and better once the day trippers have gone back to Varadero.
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- 20:00
Castropol
EatCuban cooking with an Asturian streak, strong on small plates, with iron tables in the arcade outside if the room is full.
With more time: If you land early enough to still be moving at ten, walk the two blocks down to Plaza Vieja. It fills up after dark, and the balconies around it are lived in rather than let out.
Day 2 in Havana
The Royal Force Castle, Plaza Vieja and the nine o'clock cannon
Start at the water. The Royal Force Castle was finished in 1577, which makes it the oldest bastioned fortress in the Americas, and it holds the country's maritime museum: models of the treasure fleets, salvage from wrecks, and a moat you can walk the whole way round.
From there it is ten minutes south through the old town to Plaza Vieja, which was a market and later a car park before it was restored. Climb the camera obscura tower on the corner for a slow 360 degree sweep of the rooftops, which is the only way to understand how tightly the old city is packed.
In the evening, cross the harbour to La Cabaña. Soldiers in eighteenth century uniform fire a cannon over the water just before nine, a ceremony that once marked the closing of the city gates and now marks nothing at all except that it is nine o'clock. Go early, walk the ramparts while the light is still on the old town opposite, and eat before you go rather than after.
- 09:30
The Royal Force Castle
OtherCompleted in 1577 and the oldest bastioned fort in the Americas, now Cuba's maritime museum, with wreck salvage and fleet models inside.
- 11:30
Cámara Oscura
VisitA camera obscura at the top of a tower on Plaza Vieja, throwing a live 360 degree image of the rooftops onto a white dish.
- 12:30
Factoría Plaza Vieja
EatThe brewpub on Plaza Vieja, pouring light, dark and black beer of its own, which is a rarer thing in Havana than rum.
- 14:00
Los Marinos
EatSeafood on a pier in the harbour, with enough breeze on the terrace to make an afternoon there bearable in August.
- 19:00
Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña
OtherThe big eighteenth century fort across the water, with a Che Guevara room, an armoury and the cannon ceremony at the end of the evening.
With more time: With a spare hour in the middle of the day, the rum museum near the harbour runs short guided tours and is one of the few places in the old town that is reliably air conditioned.
Day 3 in Havana
The Museum of the Revolution, the Bellas Artes and the Capitolio
One morning of twentieth century history, and Havana gives you the good version of it. The Museum of the Revolution occupies the presidential palace Cuba was governed from until 1959, and the building is half the exhibit: bullet damage from the 1957 student assault still in the marble stairs, gilded rooms hung with rifles. The account it gives of the years since 1959 is the official one, which is itself worth seeing stated plainly.
Next door, the Cuban wing of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is the country's great gallery and badly underrated by visitors. Three floors of Cuban painting from the colonial portraits through to the 1960s poster artists, in a cool modernist building, usually almost empty.
Finish at the Capitolio, finished in 1929 and unmistakably modelled on the one in Washington, though a little taller. It housed the Cuban congress before the revolution, spent decades as a science academy, and now holds the National Assembly again.
- 09:30
Museum of the Revolution
CultureThe former presidential palace, telling the state's own version of Cuban history from the colony to the present, gilded rooms and all.
- 12:00
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
CultureThe Arte Cubano building, holding the strongest collection of Cuban art anywhere, and usually close to empty.
- 14:00
Hanoi
EatAn old fashioned dining room near the Capitolio with live music, no air conditioning, and black beans and rice done properly.
- 15:45
National Capitol Building
ArchitectureNeoclassical, completed in 1929, and home to the National Assembly again after decades as something else entirely.
- 18:00
El Floridita Bar
EatThe other Hemingway bar, kept almost exactly as it was in the 1950s. The room is the reason to go, not the daiquiri.
With more time: The Gran Teatro is on the same block as the Capitolio and worth checking for a ballet or a concert; the national company performs there and tickets are usually available on the night.
Day 4 in Havana
The Malecón at dawn, then Plaza de la Revolución
Get up early on the last morning. Before eight the Malecón belongs to fishermen and to people walking to work, the sea wall is still cool, and the row of half ruined buildings along it is at its best in low light. By ten it is a hot exposed road with traffic on it.
Then take the taxi to the airport by way of Plaza de la Revolución, which is on the road out. It is an enormous bare expanse of concrete, with the José Martí memorial at one end and the steel outline of Che Guevara on the interior ministry facing it. Twenty minutes is plenty, and going at nine avoids both the heat and the coach parties.
- 07:30
Walk along the Malecón
VisitThe sea wall walk, done early, while it still belongs to fishermen rather than to traffic.
- 10:00
Plaza de la Revolución
OtherThe vast political square on the airport road, dominated by a marble Marti and a steel Che facing each other across the concrete.
With more time: For a late flight, Colon Cemetery is a few minutes further west and holds an hour or two of extraordinary funerary sculpture.
Before you go
Getting around
Habana Vieja and Centro Habana are walkable end to end, and walking is how you see the parts of the city nobody restored. For anything further, the choice is a metered state taxi or one of the private cars, including the 1950s American saloons that work as shared taxis on fixed routes. Agree the fare before you get in, every time, whatever the car looks like.
The airport sits about 20 km south of the centre, and the road out passes the huge political square in Vedado, which is why the last morning is worth planning around the taxi rather than fighting it.
Money and booking
Cuba's currency and card rules have been rewritten several times in recent years, and any figure you read online may already be wrong. Assume cards from your own bank may not work, bring cash in a major currency, and ask your accommodation what applies the week you arrive rather than trusting a blog.
Restaurants and museums are cheap by Caribbean standards and stock is not reliable. Ask what the kitchen actually has before you order, and take the first answer as the menu.
Staying safe and sane
Havana is a comfortable city to walk in daylight, including the shabbier blocks of Centro Habana, and the police presence around tourist areas is heavy. After dark, stay on the Malecón and the lit main streets rather than cutting through the side streets of Centro.
You will be approached, often, by people offering a bar, a band, a cigar deal or a tour. The polite version of no is to keep walking without slowing down. Anything bought through a middleman costs you their commission.
The thing nobody tells you about Havana is how quiet it is. There is very little traffic by the standards of a capital of two million people, so what you hear walking home at night is conversation, dominoes on a table, somebody practising the trumpet three floors up.
Give it three nights, walk more than you think you should, and spend at least one evening doing nothing on the sea wall with everybody else.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is four days enough for Havana?
- For the old town, yes, comfortably. Three nights covers the four squares, the harbour forts, one museum morning and an early walk on the Malecón without any day feeling rushed. What four days does not give you is the rest of the island: Viñales and Trinidad both need a further two or three nights each, and neither is a day trip.
- Do I need a car in Havana?
- No, and it would be a nuisance. The old town is walkable, parking is difficult, and taxis are cheap for the few longer journeys. Save a hire car for the drive out to Viñales or the Bay of Pigs if you are continuing beyond the city.
- What is the best time of year to go?
- December to April is drier and less brutal, which is also when the old town is fullest. June to October is hot, humid and inside the hurricane season, though the city is noticeably cheaper and emptier. Whenever you go, do the walking early and take the middle of the afternoon off.
- Can I change the days around?
- Yes, and you may have to: opening hours in Havana are not reliable and museums close without notice. Copy the plan into a trip, drag the days into the order that suits your flight times, and swap anything that turns out to be shut.