Havana

The Spanish governor Diego Velázquez founded San Cristóbal de la Habana in 1514 on the south coast of Cuba, and by 1519 the town had moved to its present site beside a deep, sheltered bay on the north coast. The harbour made its fortune: Havana became the meeting point for the treasure fleets returning to Spain, overtook Santiago by the middle of the 16th century and became the capital of the island in 1552. Walls and forts were built against pirates and rival navies, beginning with the Castillo de la Real Fuerza and the Morro at the harbour mouth. Epidemics were a constant danger; yellow fever brought from Cartagena in 1649 killed a third of the population.

A British force captured the city in 1762, and Spain recovered it the next year in exchange for Florida, then built the vast La Cabaña fortress, completed in 1774. Sugar wealth in the following century paid for mansions, theatres and promenades beyond the walls, and in the early 20th century the city spread west into Vedado and Miramar. The Capitolio was built in 1926–29, and American money brought hotels and casinos.

After the 1959 revolution Havana became the seat of the one-party state, and the presidential palace became the Museum of the Revolution. Old Havana and its fortifications were listed by UNESCO in 1982, and a restoration campaign began the following year. The migration crisis of 2021–23 hit the city hard, and its official population fell sharply; since 2024 repeated failures of the national grid and a deepening fuel crisis have brought long blackouts to the capital.

Havana is Cuba's cultural capital. The Gran Teatro on the Prado is home to the Cuban National Ballet and to the International Ballet Festival of Havana, first held in 1960 and now one of the oldest ballet festivals in the world. The Havana Film Festival has gathered Latin American filmmakers every December since 1979, and the Havana Biennial, founded in 1984, brings contemporary artists from across the developing world. The Fábrica de Arte Cubano, in a former cooking-oil factory in Vedado, mixes galleries, concerts and a club.

Music is everywhere, from son bands in Old Havana bars to jazz in Vedado clubs. Rumba lives on in the barrios of Centro Habana and Guanabacoa, and Guanabacoa and Regla, across the bay, are centres of Santería and Afro-Cuban religious brotherhoods; Guanabacoa had the first African cabildo in the city. Chinatown, in Centro Habana, recalls the Chinese contract workers who opened their first businesses there in 1858.

Habaneros are known across Cuba for quick talk and big-city confidence. Baseball is the passion of the street, and evenings bring people out to the Malecón, where friends, couples and fishermen gather along the seawall.

The city had about 2.1 million people in 2021, but its official population had fallen to about 1.75 million by the end of 2024 after a wave of emigration. It is divided into fifteen municipalities, from the crowded colonial blocks of Old Havana and Centro Habana, where most of the city's poorest housing is concentrated, to the 20th-century grid of Vedado and the villas of Miramar. Many old buildings are in poor repair, and partial collapses make the news every year.

Havana holds the government ministries, more than 100 diplomatic missions and most of the country's hotels and private businesses. The growth of small private enterprises since 2021 is most visible here, in shops, cafés and delivery services, but state salaries are very low, and many households depend on remittances from relatives abroad, tips from tourism and informal trade.

Days are shaped by the national crisis: long blackouts, queues for bread and fuel, erratic water supply and high prices at private shops. Since early 2026 a blockade of fuel shipments has deepened the energy crisis, and island-wide blackouts have recurred. Evenings still gather people on the seawall, on doorsteps and in the parks where the Wi-Fi signal is strongest.

Havana has the widest choice of food in Cuba, from state cafeterias selling cheap pizza and sandwiches to private paladares serving Cuban and international cooking. The classic dishes are ropa vieja, shredded stewed beef; ajiaco, a thick stew of root vegetables, plantain and meat; moros y cristianos, rice and black beans cooked together; and fried plantain, both savoury tostones and sweet maduros. Croquetas and pan con lechón, a roast-pork roll, are the street snacks, and ingredients depend on what the shortages allow.

The city claims a share of the world's cocktails. The mojito — rum, lime, sugar, mint and soda — is linked above all to La Bodeguita del Medio, which says it has served the drink since 1942, a claim others dispute. El Floridita at the end of Calle Obispo is famous for its frozen daiquirí and for Ernest Hemingway, who drank there. Strong, sweet coffee, cafecito, punctuates the day.

Coppelia, the state ice-cream parlour in Vedado opened in 1966, is a Havana institution, where long queues of residents paying in pesos wait for whichever one or two flavours are available that day. Havana also rolls many of Cuba's cigars, using leaf grown in Pinar del Río.