Havana – Old Town – Habana Vieja

The old town of Havana is known as Habana Vieja. It was justly awarded UNSECO World Heritage status a few years back. This is the postcard pretty part of town. It’s amazingly beautiful because everything looks like it’s falling to bits. It’s also amazingly crowded!

Vieja is the suburb where most of the colonial buildings are located. It was the first part of town to be populated by the Spanish. It sits right on the harbour, to the east of the modern city centre. The area is full of sixteenth and seventeenth century mansion blocks. In between, are narrow streets, crammed with overhanging balconies and ornate door carvings and fancy windows. Well, that’s how it was originally. Today, it’s rapidly falling apart, which is where the charm of the area comes from.

Despite all the revolutions, wars and deprivation, the buildings of Vieja are remarkably all intact. The suburb has been preserved in its entirety. There are no skyscrapers, no shopping malls and definitely no McDonalds. The main reason it was preserved, is that the area was not very popular to live. It was basically left to rot whilst people moved out of the old town into the new suburbs.

After the area was awarded World Heritage status, the government started a program to repair and restore the area. The program started with the biggest buildings and is ongoing. This adds greatly to the charm of the area. The majority of buildings are pretty run down. The plaster is all peeling or entirely gone. The doors and windows are all cracked, broken and held together with string. To live in one of these buildings must be pretty horrific. They look like lice infested death traps.

Then you see one of the restored buildings. They’re usually painted some amazingly bright colour and look amazing. They have restored the decorations on the front of the buildings and the eaves. The effect is amazing. They are just pretty!

There are a number of public squares in the area. The main one contains the cathedral, but there’s also the Army square and the Vieja square. These squares generally contain the prettiest buildings that have also been restored. They’re pretty atmospheric, except for the tourists.

Actually, the number of tourists surprised me. Cuba is not the first place people tend to think of when they’re planning a summer holiday. I kind of expected to have the country to myself. Not so. Cuba is definitely on the tourists trail now. In some parts of the Vieja, the tourists outnumber the locals two to one. Most people seem to be on organised city tours. They tend to stop all the time and form clots in the streets. This can make getting around a bit of a hassle – avoiding tour groups is much more of a problem than avoiding holes in the road.

Vieja is one of those places that is going to be destroyed by its own popularity. Sure, it’s pretty and atmospheric, but it’s not that fun when you’re crushed to the side of the street by a passing herd of Spanish tourists. As more of the area is restored, perhaps the crush of tourists will be dispersed. Let’s hope so.