Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta
Harbor-mouth fortress whose nightly chain to a sister castle never once stopped an enemy fleet.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta in Havana follows the massive iron chain that guards hauled across the harbor mouth to El Morro every night for roughly a century and a half, after King Philip the second ordered the fort built in fifteen eighty-nine and engineer Giovanni Bautista Antonelli designed its defenses. You'll hear how long it took to finish, how heavy the chain grew over the decades, and what finally put that nightly ritual to the test in seventeen sixty-two. Look across the channel toward El Morro to see the fortress the chain once linked to this shore.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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