Cuba - Lonely Planet [80]
At the bottom of the university steps is the Monumento a Julio Antonio Mella (cnr Neptuno & San Lázaro), a monument to the student leader who founded the first Cuban Communist Party in 1925. In 1929 the dictator Machado had Mella assassinated in Mexico City. More interesting than the monument itself are the black-and-white Mella portraits permanently mounted in the wall in the little park across San Lázaro.
MUSEO NAPOLEóNICO
An anomaly – but an interesting one – is the esoteric Museo Napoleónico ( 879-1460; San Miguel No 1159; unguided/guided CUC$3/5; 9am-4:30pm Tue-Sat) situated just outside the university walls. It’s a collection of 7000 objects associated with the life of Napoleon Bonaparte amassed by Cuban sugar baron Julio Lobo and politician Orestes Ferrera. Highlights include sketches of Voltaire, paintings of the battle of Waterloo, china, furniture, an interesting recreation of Napoleon’s study and bedroom, and one of several bronze Napoleonic death masks made two days after the emperor’s death by his personal physician, Dr Francisco Antommarchi.
OTHER MUSEUMS
Two museums further afield in Vedado that are worth checking out if you’re in the neighborhood are the Museo de Artes Decorativas ( 830-9848; Calle 17 No 502 btwn Calles D & E; admission CUC$2; 11am-7pm Tue-Sat), with its fancy rococo, oriental and art-deco baubles, and the Museo de Danza ( 831-2198; Línea No 365; admission CUC$2; 11am-6:30pm Tue-Sat), which collects objects from Cuba’s rich dance history, including some personal effects of Alicia Alonso.
PARQUE ALMENDARES
Running along the banks of the city’s Río Almendares, below the bridge on Calle 23, is this wonderful oasis of green and fresh air in the heart of chaotic Havana. The park was restored in 2003 and they did a beautiful job: benches now line the river promenade, plants grow profusely and there are many facilities here, including an antiquated miniature golf course, the Anfiteatro Parque Almendares (a small outdoor performance space) and a playground. There are several good places to eat.
PLAZA DE LA REVOLUCIóN
Conceived by French urbanist Jean Claude Forestier in the 1920s, the gigantic Plaza de la Revolución (known as Plaza Cívica until 1959) was part of Havana’s ‘new city’ that grew up between 1920 and 1959. As the nexus point of Forestier’s ambitious plan, the square was built on a small hill (the Loma de los Catalanes), in the manner of Paris’ Place de Étoile, with various avenues fanning out toward the Río Almendares, Vedado and the Parque de la Fraternidad in Centro Habana.
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ART DECO IN HAVANA
Art deco is a distinctive early-20th century architectural style that reached its zenith in the 1920s and ’30s in structures such as New York’s Chrysler Building. But disguised beneath 50 years of revolutionary dust, Havana hides some of the most quintessential art-deco monuments on the planet.
Financed by a decade-long sugar boom and inspired by the elegant modernist building trends imported into the United States from Europe following WWI, Havana’s 20-year flirtation with art deco began in the late 1920s with a flurry of US-backed construction projects.
The city’s pièce de résistance was – and still is – the opulentEdificio Bacardí, an exotic early incarnation of the art-deco style that was completed in 1929 using polychrome tiles and multitextured bricks to provide a Havana HQ for the world-famous rum dynasty.
More iconic buildings followed, including the 14-story López