Ampliar

Ampliar

Ampliar

Havana is the master of time and memory, says Cuban poet Miguel Barnet. U.S. architect Andre Duany believes Havana, as a city, has the potential of an American Rome. For Spanish poet Garcia Lorca, the Cuban capital was just a “wicket.” An “irreducible ambivalence” is the kind of charm that essayist and critic Graziella Pogolotti sees in Havana, while the city's historian Eusebio Leal is convinced that “defining Havana is as hard as saying what poetry is all about.”

Havana, the bustling city so excellently splayed in the canvasses of Rene Portocarrero, is an open-minded and unbiased port burg with a flair to live its own inner life; a city boasting all styles and at the same time with no style at all; “a style without a style that in the long run, out of symbiosis and plastering together, stands out in a peculiar baroque approach that serves as a style definition,” as put by great Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier.

This baroque city –in its heterogenic and untidy sense- is also shy, sober, kind of hidden and built at a human scale in which architecture never gets to crush people. That's what happens in the city's historic core and in modern Havana where high-rises and skyscrapers –sometimes so impersonal and stripped of any character whatsoever- never bar sunrays from leaking through or the fresh sea breeze from blowing in.

This is one of the cities in the Americas that better preserves both its historic legacy and colonial core. The village's foundational center, in the so-called Old Havana, accounts for one of the continent's major urban compounds. This part of town shows off 88 highly valuable historic and architectural monuments, 860 environmental jewels and 1,760 harmonic edifices built somewhere between the 17th and 19th centuries. “This is by and large a monumental area. Around 90 percents of its buildings are very valuable,” Dr. Eusebio Leal points out.

In modern Havana, the Vedado area –one of the most coherent manifestations of what contemporary urbanism is actually like- is the very best this city has to offer, all experts believe. Like many other city areas, El Vedado is deeply rundown and damaged. Yet it's still standing there and continues to be one of the most sought-after neighborhoods among Havana's residents.

According to architect Mario Coyula, the values of Old Havana get so much hype that some might dangerously think that the rest of the place is worthless. From an architectural viewpoint, over fifty percent of Havana is valuable. “Trends and styles of all stripes and from all ages bear out this assertion,” Mr. Coyula explains. “The essence of Havana is the concert that it itself pieces together and scale is no doubt the name of the game here, as well as the rhythm between light and shadows projected by the facades.”

For this outstanding architect, there are two emblematic building in the city: the Palace of the Captain-Generals in Old Havana, and Las Ruinas Restaurant in Lenin Park, right in the outskirts of town.

Of course, there're many others worth stealing a peek at. So, let's get this show on the road, shall we?