The Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas (National Museum of Decorative Arts) is housed within a rather interesting building in the district of Vedado, Havana. If you are on your way through Vedado and have free time, it’s worth visiting this museum, or at least to see the building itself. The construction was designed by French architects Virad and Dastugue, surrounded by beautiful gardens with sculptures. The Museum exhibits in its spacious rooms valuable works of European and Oriental art dating back to the 18th to 20th centuries. Among the items stored within the museums and the ones on display in its exhibition rooms, this museum has more than 33,000 works of high artistic and historic value from the reigns of Louis XV, Louis XVI and Napoleón II, as well as some oriental pieces dating from the 16th to the 21st centuries. It also has a Hall of Oriental Lacquers, with Chinese parabanes from the 17th to the 21st century; and a dining room in the Regency style and with Italian marble. You will find very carefully preserved furniture, ceramics, porcelains, paintings, and sculptures as well as works of applied arts. This museum offers several services with guided tours and specialized tours, and also features a library with cultural activities.

Very close to the bicentennial University of Havana is the Napoleonic Museum. This museum, the finest dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte outside of France, is housed in a small Florentine palace built in line with plans for a villa designed for the Medici family. It houses more than 7,000 pieces: weapons, military equipment, furniture, Sèvres porcelain, paintings, coins, books, personal items used by the Bonaparte family and even the death mask of the prisoner of St Helena, brought to Cuba by his last doctor. The Napoleonic Museum is considered to be one of the most important of the world, It is unique in its type in Latin America.

This cemetery holds the largest concentration of statues in the country and its finest funerary monuments representing different styles of architecture. Its structure is rectangular shaped Roman camp and comprises a grid of street blocks and lots. The entrance features a sculptural monument, Carrara marble, 34 meters long and 21.66 meters high, it is one of the most outstanding Cuban works of the 19th century. Classified as a National Monument, the cemetery is therefore seen as an outdoor museum. The cemetery is the only American cemetery dedicated to Christopher Columbus, the great navigator who discovered the island and other major destinations in the Americas.

The Avenida de los Presidentes de la Habana Avenue is located in the quarter of Vedado, Havana, surrounded by statues of important Latin American presidents, in the way of Las Ramblas of Barcelona. Among these statues are those of Salvador Allende, Simón Bolívar, and Benito Juárez. This wonderful avenue is known by Cubans as Calle G. To the north of Calle G is the Monument to Calixto García, a sculpture in honor of the brave Cuban general who US military leaders prevented from attending the Spanish surrender in 1898, in Santiago de Cuba. The statue represents the general riding a horse, and is surrounded by 24 bronze sheets telling the story of Calixto’s fight for the Independence of Cuba. At the south is the great monument to José Miguel Gómez, the second president of Cuba. Another one was dedicated to Tomás Estrada Palma, the first president of Cuba, who was considered a puppet of the US, however the only trace left of this statue is a couple of shoes on a pedestal. This place is quite lively during the evenings, when youngsters visit it looking to enjoy themselves with its guitars and drums. This atmosphere is especially present on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.