Founded in 1819 as Fernandina de Jagua, this is the youngest of all cities established in Cuba during the colonial rule, the only one whose first residents were not Spaniards and that boasted a fortress –the island nation’s third-largest fort after the Morro Castle in Havana and the San Pedro de la Roca in Santiago de Cuba– long before becoming a burg.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the huge Cienfuegos Bay was a safe haven for pirates who built some kind of kingdom of their own within the European monarchies that ruled the Caribbean island. In the same breath, this area was a major smuggling center in which mostly Spanish authorities were enduring heavy losses. That’s why engineer Jose Tantete was commissioned to design a defensive system to protect the enclave while troops were hitting the marine looters hard on the ground. Pirates’ inland incursions had turned out to be a serious hurdle to set up settlements and villages in that particular area of south-central Cuba. The constructive works came to an end in 1745 and the Fortress of Our Lady of the Angeles de Jagua was then equipped with infantry troops in military barracks, heavy artillery and all the necessary conditions to work under any circumstances. The early effort to found Cienfuegos in the territory it’s located in now was made by fifty French families from Bordeaux, New Orleans, Haiti and other Caribbean islands on a supreme pledge to build a thriving village. The expedition was commanded by Louis D´Clouet, and a few days later, after invoking King Fernando VII and recalling under the shadow of a huge majagua tree that they were standing on the lands of the former Jagua chiefdom, the foundational ceremony was held with flying colors on April 22, 1819. The meeting minute also included the joint decision of giving the new town the name of Fernandina de Jagua, though it was renamed as Cienfuegos in 1830. The perfect straight urban layout that makes up a thoroughly-designed checkerboard design is an element that singles out Cienfuegos within the framework of Cuban cities. Inspired in euphuist concepts taken from the neoclassical style, the city was bestowed with the same order and geometrical rigor the expansion of the world was based upon. High ceilings, domes, party walls, the sober elegance of its major buildings, coupled with a stately atmosphere and absolute harmony of its entire architecture, have given this city some good names –perhaps a tad immodest but right on the beam– like the Lovely City by the Sea or the South Pearl. The former Arms Square –today’s Marti Park- is 200 meter long and 100 meters wide. It’s perched on the historic core of town and it was declared World Heritage by UNESCO. Other major landmarks are its own Arch of Triumph and a gazebo, and a beautiful marble monument to Jose Marti by Italian sculptor Giovanni Nicolini that was unveiled in 1906 to replace a statue of Queen Elizabeth the Catholic that had been knocked down by a hurricane back in 1882. The Terry Theater –built in 1889- is one of the buildings that surround the square. Other must-sees are the Ferrer Palace, the City Hall, the Cathedral of the Pure Conception with its couple of uneven towers, and last but not least a gorgeous building that housed the Municipal Museum. This is a genuine neoclassical gem constructed in 1893 that had formerly housed the Spanish Casino and that now harbors wonderful collections of decorative art. The Prado Walkway is the axis of the ordered French-style village. Opened in 1922, it rapidly struck the attention of the residents of Cienfuegos who, until then, could only huddle in the Marti Park. Hedged by apartment buildings featuring long porches supported by columns, the Prado takes visitors straight to Punta Gorda, a peninsula stripped of a seawall that swerves into the bright bay and home to one of the most luring residential areas in the city, with a few houses, like the ones taking the Palace of Tourism, a remarkably finesse edifice. At the end of this tour and far in the distance, beyond the Jagua Hotel and Casa de Valle, a small urbanization of large wooden houses inspired in the U.S. balloon flame, is the perfect curtain downer.