Cuba - Lonely Planet [333]
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BETWEEN A ROCK & A HARD PLACE
A Unesco World Heritage Site since 1997, the Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca del Morro (Map; 69-15-69; admission CUC$4, camera CUC$1; 9am-5pm Mon-Fri, 8am-4pm Sat & Sun) sits like an impregnable citadel atop a 60m-high promontory at the entrance to Santiago harbor, 10km southwest of the city. But, caught between a rock and a hard place, impregnable it wasn’t!
The fort was designed in 1587 by famous Italian military engineer Giovanni Bautista Antonelli (who also designed La Punta and El Morro forts in Havana) to protect Santiago from pillaging pirates who had successfully sacked the city in 1554. Due to financial constraints, the building work didn’t start until 1633 (17 years after Antonelli’s death) and it carried on sporadically for the next 60 years. But, before it was even finished, El Morro had been overrun and partly destroyed by British privateer Henry Morgan, who rampaged through on his way to Santiago in 1664 where he mockingly set up court for two weeks. Further delays were caused by disruptive changes in architects and a series of damaging earthquakes in the 1680s.
Finally finished in the early 1700s, El Morro’s massive batteries, bastions, magazines and walls got little opportunity to serve their true purpose. With the era of piracy in decline, the fort was converted into a prison in the 1800s and it stayed that way – bar a brief interlude during the 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American War – until Cuban architect Francisco Prat Puig mustered up a restoration plan in the late 1960s.
Revived and reinvigorated over the following two decades, El Morro was adopted by Unesco in 1997, who lauded it as the ‘most complete and best-preserved example of Spanish-American military architecture based on Italian and Renaissance design principles.’
Today, the fort hosts the swashbuckling Museo de Piratería, with another room given over to the US-Spanish naval battle that took place in the bay in 1898. The stupendous views from the upper terrace take in the wild western ribbon of Santiago’s coastline backed by the velvety Sierra Maestra.
To get to El Morro from the city center, you can take bus 212 to Ciudamar and cover the final 20 minutes on foot. Alternatively, a round-trip taxi ride from Parque Céspedes with wait should cost CUC$12 to CUC$15.
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The highlight of the cemetery, for most, is the quasi-religious mausoleum to national hero, José Martí (1853–95). Erected in 1951 during the Batista era, the imposing hexagonal structure is positioned so that Martí’s wooden casket (draped solemnly in a Cuban flag) receives daily shafts of sunlight. This is in response to a comment Martí made in one of his poems that he would like to die not as a traitor in darkness, but with his visage facing the sun. A round-the-clock guard of the mausoleum is changed, amid much pomp and ceremony, every 30 minutes.
Horse carts go along Av Jesús Menéndez, from Parque Alameda to Cementerio Santa Ifigenia (one peso); otherwise it’s a good leg-stretching walk.
AROUND SANTIAGO DE CUBA
Cayo Granma
A small, populated key near the jaws of the bay, Cayo Granma (formerly known as Cayo Smith; Map) is a little fantasy island of red-roofed wooden houses – many of them on stilts above the water – that guard a traditional fishing community. Come here to enjoy a slower, more hassle-free Santiago. You can hike the short route up to the small whitewashed Iglesia de San Rafael (Map), at the key’s highest point, or circumvent the whole island in 15 minutes, but the best thing about this place is just hanging out, soaking up a bit of the real Cuba.
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