49 Fun Facts About Havana

Who became the first sitting US president to visit Havana since Calvin Coolidge in 1928?

Barack Obama landed in March 2016 during the thaw in relations and toured Old Havana on foot with his family through a downpour, cheered by crowds who braved the rain to see him.

Which city did Havana replace as the seat of Cuba's colonial governors in the 16th century?

Santiago de Cuba lost out because Havana's deep, sheltered harbour became the gathering point for treasure fleets sailing home to Spain, and the governors followed the ships.

Which founding name, honouring the patron saint of travellers, did Havana first carry?

San Cristóbal de la Habana honours Saint Christopher, still the city's patron; tradition dates its first mass, under a ceiba tree, to 16 November 1519, kept as Havana's birthday.

One theory traces the name 'Habana' to Habaguanex, who was what?

Habaguanex was a Taíno chief, or cacique, said to have controlled the region when the Spanish arrived; little else is recorded of him, so the derivation stays a theory.

Locals write 'La Habana' with a b, so where did English get its 'v' spelling?

From older Spanish usage: for over two centuries Spanish documents wrote Havana or Hauana, and 'Habana' only became standard around 1821, after English had settled on the v.

Where on Cuba do historians believe Havana was first founded, before it moved to its present bay?

On the island's south coast, near today's Batabanó, is where historians place the first Havana, though no trace of it has been found; its swampy site was abandoned and the town moved north, probably for the better harbour.

What did French corsair Jacques de Sores do to Havana in 1555?

Burned it: the Huguenot corsair seized lightly defended Havana, came away with far less than he had hoped for and torched it; within three years Spain had begun the stone castle of La Real Fuerza to guard the port.

Which king granted Havana the title of City in 1592?

Philip II raised Havana from town to city in 1592, recognising the port's role as assembly point of the treasure fleets.

A 1649 epidemic that killed about a third of Havana's people is believed to have been which disease?

Yellow fever, thought to have come by ship from Cartagena, raged from May to October; in 1881 Carlos Finlay told Havana's Academy of Sciences that mosquitoes spread it, and was doubted for two decades.

Which British rock band played a free open-air concert to a vast Havana crowd in March 2016?

The Rolling Stones played free to hundreds of thousands at the Ciudad Deportiva sports ground on 25 March 2016; decades earlier their records had been banned in Cuba as ideologically suspect.

Which power captured Havana in a 1762 siege during the Seven Years' War?

Britain took the city after mining and storming the Morro castle; during eleven months of occupation it threw Havana open to trade with its own colonies.

Under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Spain got Havana back in exchange for what?

Florida was the price: Spain ceded it to recover Havana after eleven months in enemy hands, then began the huge La Cabaña fortress that same year so the city could not be taken that way again.

Whose remains were moved to Havana in 1796 and stayed until 1898?

Christopher Columbus's remains went from Santo Domingo to Havana's cathedral in 1796 and on to Seville in 1898; DNA tests in 2006 backed the Seville bones, though Dominican officials insisted he had never left.

Its new theatres and columned mansions earned 19th-century Havana which nickname?

Paris of the Antilles: once Spain's trade monopoly ended, the port boomed, shops stocked the latest fashions, theatres booked the star actors of the day and the newly rich built mansions fronted with columns.

The sinking of which US battleship in Havana Harbor triggered the Spanish–American War?

USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor on 15 February 1898, killing more than 260 men; 'Remember the Maine' fuelled the push for war, though what caused the blast was never settled.

Havana-born José Raúl Capablanca won a world championship in his home city in 1921 in which game?

Chess: Capablanca, who said he learned the game at four by watching his father play, took the world title from Emanuel Lasker in Havana in 1921 without losing a single game.

Which Havana-born singer, famous for her shout of ¡Azúcar!, became known around the world as the Queen of Salsa?

Celia Cruz grew up in Havana's poor Santos Suárez district and made her name with the Sonora Matancera orchestra; after she left for the United States she was barred from ever returning to Cuba.

UNESCO's 1982 listing of Old Havana also covers what?

Its fortifications: UNESCO listed Old Havana and the ring of Spanish forts that guarded it in 1982, and city historian Eusebio Leal then led the restoration of the colonial core until his death in 2020.

Which Havana-born ballerina danced on for decades despite losing most of her sight and founded what became Cuba's National Ballet?

Alicia Alonso lost her peripheral vision to detached retinas in her twenties, yet kept dancing Giselle with stage lights and her partners' whispers to guide her; she died in 2019 aged 98.

Which river crosses Havana from south to north before reaching the sea a few miles west of the bay?

Almendares: the island's first people called it Casiguaguas, and an early Havana stood at its mouth, La Chorrera, before the settlers moved on to the bay; the little stone fort of La Chorrera marks the spot.

What does the 20-metre white marble statue unveiled on a hill above Havana's harbour in 1958 depict?

Jesus Christ: Cuban sculptor Jilma Madera carved the Christ of Havana from Carrara marble blessed by Pope Pius XII, and it was unveiled at Christmas, about a week before the revolution toppled Batista.

What rare disaster struck eastern Havana in January 2019?

An EF4 tornado tore through Regla, Guanabacoa and Diez de Octubre on the night of 27 January 2019, killing several people; one resident said it sounded like an aeroplane falling out of the sky.

Which Havana neighbourhood is the city's financial district and home to the University of Havana?

Vedado means 'forbidden': for centuries building was banned on this stretch of coast so that raiders would find no road into the city; it was laid out on a grid from the 1850s and got its hotel towers a century later.

Whose face, outlined in steel, covers the Interior Ministry building overlooking Havana's Plaza de la Revolución?

Che Guevara's outline carries his slogan 'Hasta la Victoria Siempre', ever onward to victory; since 2009 a matching steel portrait of fellow commander Camilo Cienfuegos has covered the ministry next door.

Havana's international airport is named after which figure?

José Martí International Airport, in the Boyeros municipality south-west of the centre, honours the poet and independence hero who died in battle in 1895; it is Cubana de Aviación's hub.

Who made the brand-new Havana Hilton his headquarters in 1959, before it was renamed the Habana Libre?

Fidel Castro ran his new government from the Continental Suite, room 2324, after his column entered Havana in January 1959; the tower had opened only the previous March and was nationalised and renamed in 1960.

Which giant state ice-cream parlour opened in Havana in 1966?

Coppelia, the state ice-cream parlour opened in 1966 at the top of La Rampa, serves thousands of customers daily from its circular pavilion and appears in the 1993 film Strawberry and Chocolate.

The Bacardi Building, finished in 1930, is a celebrated example of which style?

Art Deco: the rum firm's 1930 tower climbs in steps to a bat, the Bacardi emblem, and the bat has stayed on Havana's skyline even though the company lost its Cuban assets in 1960 and left the island.

Which novelist wrote the 1958 spy comedy Our Man in Havana, about a vacuum-cleaner salesman turned bogus secret agent?

Graham Greene has his hard-up salesman invent a whole spy ring and send London drawings of vacuum-cleaner parts as secret intelligence; the novel came out in October 1958, weeks before Batista's Havana fell.

The Havana team Industriales plays which sport?

Baseball: Industriales, the Blue Lions, were formed after the revolution scrapped Cuba's professional leagues in favour of the amateur National Series, and they won the title in their debut season of 1962–63.

Which games did Havana host in 1991?

Pan American Games: on home soil in 1991 Cuba won 140 golds to the United States' 130, even though the Americans took far more medals overall.

Which Havana cigar brand took its name from an Alexandre Dumas adventure novel?

Montecristo honours The Count of Monte Cristo: Havana's cigar factories employed readers to read aloud to the rollers, and the Dumas tale is said to have been a favourite on the factory floor when the brand appeared in the 1930s.

The Havana Film Festival, held each December since 1979, was founded to showcase filmmakers from where?

Latin America: formally the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, it opened in December 1979 with the novelist Gabriel García Márquez chairing the fiction jury, and its top prize is the Grand Coral.

Which motor-racing champion was kidnapped by rebels from his Havana hotel on the eve of the 1958 Cuban Grand Prix?

Juan Manuel Fangio, the Argentine five-time world champion, was seized by the 26th of July Movement to embarrass Batista before a race run along the Malecón, and was freed unharmed hours after it finished.

Construction of the Malecón, Havana's seafront promenade, began in 1901 while the city was under whose control?

US military occupation: work began in May 1901 under General Leonard Wood's government, set up after the war with Spain, and only about 500 metres were finished when the Americans handed over a year later.

Which blockbuster franchise filmed the opening of its eighth movie on the streets of Havana in 2016?

Fast & Furious: The Fate of the Furious opens with Dom on honeymoon in the city, racing a stripped-down old banger through its streets and crossing the line in reverse with the engine on fire.

What is embedded in the floor of El Capitolio's main hall to mark Cuba's Kilometre Zero?

A replica diamond marks Kilometre Zero: the original vanished one morning in March 1946 and turned up just as mysteriously in June 1947 on the desk of President Grau, and a copy later took its place in the floor.

The giant bronze Statue of the Republic beneath El Capitolio's dome is covered in which metal?

Gold, of 22 carats, covers the bronze figure, which the Italian sculptor Angelo Zanelli made in his Rome workshop; it was shipped from Italy and had to be put together inside the building.

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba hosted a 1946 mob summit run by Meyer Lansky and which other gangster?

Lucky Luciano, deported to Italy earlier that year, slipped back across the Atlantic to meet Lansky and the American bosses in December 1946, with Frank Sinatra on the bill as the entertainment.

Which open-air Havana cabaret, opened in a villa's gardens in 1939, is billed as a paradise under the stars?

Tropicana began as a casino and nightclub in the grounds of Villa Mina in Marianao, and its owners kept the estate's tall trees and staged the shows among them in the open air, which earned it that billing.

Which cocktail made Havana's El Floridita bar, a Hemingway haunt, famous?

Daiquiri: Hemingway was such a regular that a life-size statue of him now leans on the end of the bar.

Hemingway's tale of a Cojímar fisherman was cited when he won which prize in 1954?

The Nobel Prize citation named The Old Man and the Sea; still recovering from two plane crashes in Africa that year, Hemingway stayed away from Stockholm and sent a speech to be read for him.

Which American guitarist produced the 1997 Buena Vista Social Club album?

Ry Cooder flew to Havana in 1996 to record Cuban players with two musicians from Mali; the Malians never arrived, so he and the record label's boss rounded up the city's forgotten veterans instead.

Havana Club, first made by the Arechabala family in the port of Cárdenas, is a Cuban brand of what?

Rum: two rival bottles carry the name, because Bacardi began selling its own Havana Club in the United States in the 1990s, where the embargo keeps out the Cuban original that Pernod Ricard sells everywhere else.

Camila Cabello's hit 'Havana' features which rapper?

Young Thug raps the guest verse on a song named for Cabello's birthplace: she was born in Cojímar, on Havana's eastern edge, and left Cuba as a child; it topped the US Hot 100 in January 2018.

Havana's harbour was first called Puerto de Carenas after an explorer circling Cuba in 1508 put in there to do what?

Repair his ships: carena is the Spanish word for careening, the cleaning and mending of a hull, and early chroniclers recorded that Sebastián de Ocampo's vessels were careened in the bay, which is how it got the name.

Havana's nightly cannon shot began as the signal for what?

Closing the gates: the shot warned people to get inside the city walls for the night. The walls began to come down in 1863, but the shot outlived them as a nine o'clock ceremony performed by soldiers in colonial dress.

Which American chocolate company built an electric railway from Havana's harbour east to the city of Matanzas?

Hershey built a sugar mill about halfway to Matanzas during the First World War and laid the line to carry workers in and sugar out to the ports, bound for its chocolate factory in Pennsylvania.

Alongside three castles, which object on Havana's coat of arms marks the city as the gateway to the New World?

A key: the Spanish Crown styled Havana the Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies, and Queen Mariana confirmed the arms in 1665; the three castles are the Fuerza, Morro and Punta forts that guarded the harbour.