Up till recently, discerning visitors have bemoaned the lack of a really luxurious hotel in Havana. The Saratoga, which opened in November 2005, has rectified the situation. Standing on the western edge of the Historical Centre of the city, its elegant façade overlooks the other nineteenth century architectural glories of the Prado and Parque Central. The interiors, designed by European... Photos & more info...

The Hotel Florida stands on Calle Obispo, Old Havana’s liveliest street, currently being restored by the Office of the City Historian of Havana as the district’s principal shopping area, a distinction it held during the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. The Florida opened in 1885 and swiftly became renowned as one of the city’s better hotels. Its ground floor courtyard has a sliding... Photos & more info...

The ambience of the Telegrafo is definitely one of cosmopolitan hustle and bustle, as opposed to drowsy colonial charm. Located on the well-known corner of Prado and Neptuno streets (opposite a particularly good Italian restaurant) it overlooks Parque Central on one side and the elegant Paseo del Prado promenade on the other. Its pavement café area is perfectly placed for people- and vintage... Photos & more info...

The Hotel Palacio O’Farrill is a terrifically grand neoclassical mansion standing on the corner of Cuba and Chacon Streets near the port of Havana. Its owner, Don Ricardo O’Farrill y O’Daly, made his fortune in the slave trade and owned several large sugar mills. The entrance hall of his house is almost ludicrously impressive, with a toweringly high ceiling and vast iron-studded polished... Photos & more info...

Located in a wonderfully idiosyncratic building with a neo-Churrigueresque façade and tendrils of Art Nouveau wrought iron decoration, the Hotel Raquel contains further delightful design eccentricities including a vast stained glass canopy roof and a watchtower from which one can look out over the streets and squares of Old Havana. Many of the rooms have biblical names and besides the hotel being... Photos & more info...

The Santa Isabel is the grandest of Old Havana’s hotels, and its location is perfect: it stands on the eastern side of the Plaza de Armas, Havana’s earliest and most beautiful colonial square. The building is an eighteenth century mansion which was constructed for the Countess of San Juan de Jaruco but was later bought by the Count of Santovenia, whose initials can be seen in the decorative iron... Photos & more info...

The Hotel Armadores de Santander (which means ‘Shipowners of Santander’) overlooks the port of Havana. The building’s façade, with its stone reliefs of the coat of arms of Santander surrounded by maritime motifs, is wonderfully evocative of the city’s seagoing past.Havana’s entire raison to be, was the excellence of its natural harbour and its strategic position within the Spanish Empire in the... Photos & more info...

Clients are always appreciative of the service at the Hotel San Miguel, where the staff members are particularly helpful and welcoming. This grand nineteenth century mansion was restored and is now run by the Office of the City Historian of Havana, so all its profits are reinvested in the restoration of the city’s historical centre.The establishment is named after Antonio San Miguel y Segalá, an... Photos & more info...

In Cubaism’s opinion, the Hotel Conde de Villanueva runs a very close second to the Hotel Santa Isabel and indeed some of our clients prefer it for its quieter location. The building is the pretty little mansion of Claudio Martínez de Pinillos, Count of Villanueva, the leader of Cuban Creole society in the nineteenth century. It was restored and is now run by the Office of the City Historian of... Photos & more info...

This comfortable little hotel, which shares some facilities with the adjoining Hostal Valencia, is housed in an eighteenth century building which belonged to the family of Don Pedro Regalado Pedroso y Zayas, who was a ‘Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Católica’. The Hostal Valencia has become so popular that it is often frustratingly fully booked, but the Comendador is, if anything, even... Photos & more info...

The newly re-opened (April 2008) boutique property, Hotel Marques de Prado Ameno, is located on O'Reilly Steet metres from Obispo Street and nearby Plaza de Armas, Plaza de la Catedral and Parque Central squares. The hotel is named after the prominent family that lived there and turned the colonial 18th century mansion into a hotel.This smaller boutique 4-star hotel, backing up to the popular and... Photos & more info...

The hotel has not been completed yet. It is due to open in the summer of 2010. Photos & more info...

Much is made of Ernest Hemingway’s predilection for staying at the Hotel Ambos Mundos. He wrote the first few chapters of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ in room 551, which is now maintained as something of a shrine. The rooms are comfortable and this also applies to the ground floor bar area, with its cosy, squishy modern sofas. The roof terrace has great views of the Plaza de Armas and environs; for... Photos & more info...

The mansion restored and converted by the Office of the City Historian of Havana into the Hotel Beltrán de Santa Cruz is only a moment’s walk down San Ignacio Street from one of Old Havana’s most beautiful squares, the Plaza Vieja. The Plaza is the old city’s only purely residential square. It was laid out in the late sixteenth century by the disgruntled citizenry after the commander of the... Photos & more info...

The Hotel los Frailes (Friars’ Hotel) owes its name to its proximity to the Basilica and Monastery of St Francis of Assisi in the nearby Plaza de San Francisco. It is a very pleasant little hotel despite a few idiosyncrasies, principal of which is that all the staff members are required to dress as Franciscan friars. It feels faintly sacrilegious to drink a mojito mixed by a monk, but no odder... Photos & more info...

Originally built in 1928, the Park View reopened in March 2002 after a thorough restoration. Located in a historical surrounding which includes the newly renovated Museum of Fine Arts, the former Presidential Palace, and the well-known Prado Promenade, the Park View Hotel was one of the first hotels built with American capital.It was one of the most luxurious hotels in Havana in the early part of... Photos & more info...

The Hotel Tejadillo is a rather eccentric establishment, with a curious though not unpleasant layout and an even more peculiar but quite useful range of facilities. The warren-like floor plan is due to the hotel being composed of three restored Havana mansions dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The location is ideal, just round the corner from Cathedral Square, and the corner... Photos & more info...

The Hostal Valencia was the first Old Havana mansion to be converted by the Office of the City Historian into an hotel. Originally constructed for Alderman Sotolongo, a member of Havana’s Town Council, a large part of the building had actually collapsed by the time it reached the head of the queue for restoration – the remainder was braced against surrounding edifices with a complicated... Photos & more info...

The Meson de la Flota is not strictly speaking a hotel but a bar with a few rooms above it which are more than occasionally used, one suspects, by clients of the hostelry who find the prospect of walking a straight line to their more distant accommodation a little too challenging to contemplate. The establishment is designed around a maritime theme in celebration of Havana’s salty, swashbuckling... Photos & more info...