National Capitol of Cuba

This guide to the National Capitol of Cuba opens with Gerardo Machado, a president who broke his promise of a single term and ordered a capitol built to make his rigged government look like a thriving democracy. It follows the five thousand laborers who raised it in just over three years, the eighteen-meter gilded goddess hoisted into the rotunda, and the crackdown Machado ran outside these same steps while it went up. It also traces a diamond set into the floor at Cuba's exact center point, stolen in a half-hour heist in 1946 and returned over a year later with no thief ever named. Look down at the marble beneath the dome before you move on.