‘Habana is very much like a rose,’ said Fico Fellove in the movie The Lost City,
‘it has petals and it has thorns…so it depends on how you grab it.
But in the end it always grabs you.’
“One of the most beautiful cities in the world. You see it with your heart.”
Enrique Nunez Del Valle, Paladar Owner
Habana’s real essence is so difficult to pin down. Plenty of writers have had a try, though; Cuban intellectual Alejo Carpentier nicknamed Habana the ‘city of columns,’ Federico Llorca declared that he had spent the best days of his life there and Graham Greene concluded that Habana was a city where ‘anything was possible.’
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ARCHITECTURE
Habana is, without doubt, one of the most attractive and architecturally diverse cities in the world. Shaped by a colorful colonial history and embellished by myriad foreign influences from as far afield as Italy and Morocco, the Cuban capital gracefully combines Mudéjar, baroque, neoclassical, art nouveau, art deco and modernist architectural styles into a visually striking whole.
But it’s not all sweeping vistas and tree-lined boulevards. Habana doesn’t have the architectural uniformity of Paris or the instant knock-out appeal of Rome. Indeed, two decades of economic austerity has meant many of the city’s finest buildings have been left to festering an advanced state of dilapidation. Furthermore, attempting to classify Habana’s houses,palaces, churches and forts as a single architectural entity is extremely difficult.
Cuban building – rather like its music – is unusually diverse. Blending Spanish colonial with French belle epoque, and Italian Renaissance with Gaudi-esque art nouveau, the over-riding picture is often one of eclecticism run wild.
Brendan Sainsbury
sketchbloom.com 
If I may shamelessly hijack Churchill’s 1939 analysis of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy, I would say it accurately describes Cuba today – ”a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma”.
Cuba is a republic that exists in a world parallel to our own. It is an aberration. It should not exist in its current form, and that it does is thanks only to the stubbornness of current US foreign policy and to every President since Kennedy. It is a testament to the narrow minds that continue to run the United States.
Yet we, those who do not live in Cuba, have cause to be thankful. Were it not for the continuing punishment of Castro and Cuba for their dalliance with the Soviets, we would surely have been deprived of the colonial beauty of Havana long before now. Without doubt it would have been replaced with high-rise, high-rent Americana towers.
I hope when the day comes, as it surely will, that a future American administration extends the hand of friendship (and more crucially a line of credit), that the Cubans present in reply a non-diplomatic flick of the finger.
Having said that, it would be nice to see the Cuban leadership openly admitting to their mistakes of the past, and immediately releasing journalists currently imprisoned by the state. That would be a good start.
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