Old Havana
Colonial walled quarter of cobbled plazas and restored baroque mansions, funded back into repair by its own tourist trade.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Old Havana centers on historian Eusebio Leal, who in 1994 pitched Fidel Castro an unusual fix for a crumbling colonial quarter and a bankrupt state. It follows his years restoring the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales building by building, and the company he founded to let the neighborhood pay for its own repairs with tourist money instead of state funds. You'll hear how that arrangement worked for over two decades and how many of the buildings around you it eventually rebuilt. The guide follows Leal's idea from that first conversation through what it grew into.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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