Casa de la obra Pia
Baroque colonial mansion whose orphan-dowry endowment named the street, now a working embroiderers' guild.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Casa de la Obra Pia in Havana opens with a question: who still hand-stitches inside a mansion built for a colonial governor's fortune. It traces the house to the 1640s and Martin Calvo de la Puerta, whose will created a charitable dowry fund for orphaned girls, the same act of charity that gave Calle Obra Pia its name. The doorway itself is a carved stone portal shipped from Spain, and an embroiderers' cooperative still works inside the house today, past rooms of colonial porcelain and tapestries.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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