Havana: a virtual tour through food, music, films and books

Travel vicariously through the arts, culture and cuisine that give the city its beauty and rhythm

A 1950s highway, bleached to sepia by the Caribbean sun, leads from Cuba’s Santa María beaches through palm and hibiscus. It passes close to the fishing village of Cojímar, crests a small rise and there is Havana, sweeping frontage wounded but upright against the turbulent waters of the Florida Straits.

During Havana’s first centuries, its vast natural harbour was filled with Spanish treasure ships waiting to be shepherded home against British and Dutch wolves. Alexander von Humboldt, visiting in 1800, wrote of “gazing upon the fortresses crowning the rocks east of the port … and the city itself half-hidden by a forest of spars and sails of shipping.”