Parque De La Fuente De La India

This guide to the Fuente de la India in Havana follows the marble woman carved in Genoa by the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gaggini in 1837, commissioned by Claudio Martínez de Pinillos, Count of Villanueva, as a monument atop the city's Zanja Real aqueduct. It traces how a sculptor working from a description he had never seen carved a feathered, indigenous figure to stand for Havana itself, holding a cornucopia crowned with a pineapple. You'll hear about the four dolphins at her base, the water they once spouted, and the promise the fountain was built to make a thirsty colonial port. Look closely at the fruit she holds, carved never to rot.