Old Town Square
Restored colonial plaza built around a marble fountain, once ringed by a fence to keep locals from drawing water.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Plaza Vieja in Havana starts with an odd sight: a twelve-foot metal fence locked around the square's colonial marble fountain, not to protect an antique but to ration water in a neighborhood whose pipes had rotted through. It traces the fountain back to seventeen ninety-six, when the square was still called Plaza Nueva, through floggings, bullfights and a market so busy the plaza took its name, to president Gerardo Machado tearing the fountain out in the nineteen thirties to build an underground parking garage in its place.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Saint Francis of Assisi Plaza
Marble fountain of reclining lions on a cobblestone harborside square, once a freshwater stop for docked ships.
Parque De La Fuente De La India
Marble fountain of a feathered indigenous woman holding a fruit-filled cornucopia, guarded by four water-spouting dolphins.
Plaza de Armas
Colonial military square paved partly in wood, ringed by palaces and a secondhand book market.
Old Havana
Colonial walled quarter of cobbled plazas and restored baroque mansions, funded back into repair by its own tourist trade.
Convento de Santa Clara
Colonial-era cloister with one of Latin America's largest timber roofs and Havana's oldest public fountain.
Plaza del Cristo
Shaded colonial square around a mariners' church, holding a monument to a wrongfully executed poet.