The Cuban capital is, without doubts, the tourist destiny par excellence of the greater one of the Antilles. And within this one its historical center "declared by UNESCO Patrimony of the Humanity in 1982" a point is from forced reference for whichever visitor arrives at this large city, during centuries considered the key of the Gulf of Mexico.

To the distant November of 1519 the foundation goes back, in its definitive location next to the channel of entrance of one good protected bay, of the villa of San Cristóbal of Havana, turned with time o'clock of encounter of the Spanish fleets that transferred to the metropolis the extracted wealth of their dominions in the call New World, and fundamental axis the commerce and the communications between this one and the Old Continent.

Similar advantages, derived essentially from their strategic geographic position, also affected of direct way the later development of the prosperous villa, that began under protection of to grow a defensive system without pair in the America Hispanic and surrounded by a wall whose construction (initiated in second half of century XVII and concluded more than 100 years later) was considered from its ineffective and expensive beginning.

The Templete, a small inaugurated neoclassic building in 1828, is the site where the each 16 of November Havanans festejan the celebration of the first mass and the first town hall of San Cristóbal of Havana, and the point from as the tourist routes by the original nucleus of the Cuban capital begin - by the general.

To little steps they are the Seat of Arms there, around which they rise the imposing Castle of the Real Force (1577) - where today exhibits the collection of more important artistic ceramics of the Island and on whose tower is elevated the Giraldilla, an artistic vane symbol of the city and the Palaces of the Commanders in chief (Museum of the City) and of the Second Cabo.

Other three adjacent seats and their constructions invariably wake up the interest of their visitors: the Seat of the Cathedral, surrounded by opulent mansions; just recovered Old Seat, where it excels the house of the Counts of San Juan de Jaruco; and the Seat of San Franciso de Asi's, bordering to the church and the convent of equal name, in one of whose claustros is the Museum of Sacred Art.

But to walk by the streets of Havana Old, many of these still paved, also represents the possibility of approaching more than a dozen of museums and study-galleries of famous Cuban and Latin American plastic artists; to visit the houses of Benito Juárez, of Asia, Africa, Puerto Rico, of the Arabs (is there the only room for the Muslim plegarias existing in Cuba) and of Simón Bolivar.

It also turns out interesting to visit the scale model of this municipality; to journey by the Tree-lined avenue of Paula, a beautiful stroll constructed in second half of century XVIII; or to cross the bay to arrive until the ultrasailors populated with Casablanca, where the Christ of Havana is elevated, and Rule, where is the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Virgin of Rule, protector of sailors and fishermen and patron of the Bay of Havana.

The park historical-military man Nose-Cabin conforms two redoubts of the magnitude of the Castle of the Three Kings of the Nose (1630) and the strength of San Carlos of the Cabin (1774), catalogued at their moment as the work summit of the fortified with bastions defensive system. Indeed from this last fortification every night goes off, to nine o'clock, a cannon shot of safe that in showy ceremony recalls the times when individual flashes (in hours of the dawn and at dusk) constituted the been suitable signal to open or to close the walls of the city and to place or to retire the enormous floating chain of wood and bronze that gave access to the port of the villa.