04 · Art Hotels
Hotel Nacional de Cuba
Havana, Cuba
A 1930 building on a low headland, with coastal battery guns still standing in its garden
The main hall is a long arcade of round arches with a wooden ceiling divided into coffers in the Spanish style. Tile runs up the lower walls in geometric bands, and the floor is patterned stone. Wicker chairs stand in rows along the open gallery at the back, facing the garden through a screen of columns.
The hotel opened in 1930 to a design by the New York practice McKim, Mead and White, who mixed Spanish and Moorish detail into an American resort plan. Two towers with tiled caps mark the ends of a long symmetrical block, and the ground floor opens through arcades to a garden at the rear. Underground galleries dug into the rock date from the twentieth century, and the site is a National Monument.
The building stands on the Taganana headland in Vedado, raised above the traffic of the Malecón, with the seawall and the Straits of Florida in front of it. Two guns of the old Santa Clara battery sit among the palms in the garden. Because of the rise, the towers are visible from a long way along the coast road.
Last gone over · June 2026
Three distances, one hotel: none of it is a promise about a stay. We work from published sources and say so plainly; the month at the foot of the page is when we last went over them.