Castle of the Royal Force in Old Havana

 Other place in old Havana.  It´s a beatifull edification, I love it!!

In 1540 the general captain ordered the building of a fortress in order to stop the attacks of French and English pirates and corsairs against the village. That pioneer fortress in the island, “La Fuerza”, was built 300 m. from here closer to the harbours entrance and totally made of wood and some stones. It wasn’t very useful to stop the famous French pirate Jaques de Sores  in 1555 and the Governor Francisco Calona decided to built this new one “La Real Fuerza” 12 years latter (1577).

As well as it was the safest place in the village it was used to keep the gold and silver brought by the fleets on theirs way to Spain as well as the governor’s residence. Latter on in 1630 the tower with a human shaped weather vane next to it was added, similar to the Spanish one named “La Giralda” in Sevilla, as a regard to the many sailors that came from that region. The tower has on the top a replica of the bronze sculpture that once served as a weather vane, called “La Giraldilla”. The original one was made by the Spanish blacksmith Gerónimo Martín Pinzón and it is considered the first sculpture made in Cuba. is the symbol of the city and you can find it on the label of Havana Club. 

There is a legend about the woman that inspired it.

She was the wife of Hernando de Soto island´s governor during 1540. Hernando decided to conquer Florida and left his wife “Inés de Bobadilla” as stand-in governor but he never returned to Cuba so according to stories she died longing for her love

By the time the metropolis lost the control over the island, the building had several uses, during the U.S. occupation in 1898 it served as: the headquarters of the rural guard, and latter it was used as the national archive. After the revolution’s triumph it was turned in to The Museum of Arms. Nowadays it houses a museum of artistic ceramics

San Francisco de Asis square a wonderfull place in Old Havana

I love this place, The SanFrancisco de Asis square, is the second oldest in the city, it was named after the Franciscan church and convent San Francis of Assisi. It dates back to the XVII c. (1629) and it spontaneously became the first commercial place in the village.

Facing Havana harbor, the breezy Plaza de San Francisco de Asís first grew up in the 16th century when Spanish galleons stopped by at the quayside on their passage through the Indies to Spain. A market took root in the 1500s, followed by a church in 1608, though when the pious monks complained of too much noise the market was moved a few blocks south to Plaza Vieja.

Called San Francisco because of the convent next to it, this square was conceived in 1628, with the objective of supplying water to the ships trading with the metropolis. For many years it also served to stockpile the goods arriving from the harbor. Chronicles of the time say that the square had a busy commercial life. The people, in humble carts or afoot, sold and bought a variety of goods. It’s important to know that through this place the Spanish immigrants arrived to Cuba. Among the houses built around the plaza, as was already usual, the house of the Arostegui family, residence of the Captain Generals until the completion of the City Hall at the end of the 18th century, was erected.

The Plaza de San Francisco underwent a full restoration in the late 1990s and is most notable for its uneven cobblestones and the white marble Fuente de los Leones (Fountain of Lions) carved by the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gaginni in 1836. A modern statue outside the square's famous church depicts El Caballero deParís , a well-known street person who roamed Havana during the 1950s, engaging passers-by with his philosophies on life, religion, politics and current events. On the eastern side of the plaza stands the Terminal Sierra Maestra cruise terminal, which dispatches shiploads of weekly tourists, while nearby the domed Lonja del Comercio is a former commodities market erected in 1909 and restored in 1996 to provide office space for foreign companies with joint ventures in Cuba.

This is a wonderfull site in old Havana. If you need visit it when you are in Cuba, just write me and I can help you.

Cuba tourist arrivals hit record in 2014

Cuba said it welcomed a record three million international visitors in 2014, a rare bit of good news for the moribund economy which counts tourism as one of its mainstays.

 
"Today we have broken a record. We have welcomed  three million international tourists in 2014, up 5.3 percent from last year," state
television reported.  Tourism is Cuba's third largest hard-currency earning pillar, bringing  in $2.5 billion last year.