Plaza de la Catedral

Plaza de la Catedral (Cathedral Square) once occupied a lowly quarter where rainwater and refuse collected.  It was originally known as the Plazuela de la Cienaga - Little Square of the Swamp.  A cistern was built in 1587, and only in the following century was the area drained.

Catedral San Cristobal de la Habana (St. Christopher's Cathedral) is the focal building in Plaza de la Catedral.  It was initiated by the Jesuits in 1748, who were kicked out of Cuba in 1767 but the building was finished in 1777.  The baroque facade is adorned with clinging columns - the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier referred to the facade as "music turned to stone".  A royal decree in 1793 elevated the church to a cathedral.
Columns divide the rectangular church into three naves.  The neoclassical main altar is simple and made of wood; the murals above it are by Italian painter Guiseppe Perovani.

Plaza de la Catedral has a home of a former slave trader, built in 1741.  Currently it houses a small post office as it has since 1821 - Cuba's first post office.  The mailbox is set into the wall, a grotesque face of a tragic Greek mask carved into stone, with a scowling mouth as its slit.

A life-size bronze statue of Spanish flamenco dancer Antonio Gades (1936-2004) leans against a column in Plaza de la Catedral.

The back of Casa deal Marques de Arcos, which was built in 1740, is also found in Plaza de la Catedral.  When you're inside the building and looking out the front door this is what you see - which opens up to the Mural Artistico-Historico, painted by Cuban artist Andres Carrillo.

Plaza de la Catedral at night