Canimar River is a Natural Park and a river, one of the deepest in Cuba, where you can sail and enjoy the exuberant vegetation and the rich fauna of the cliffs around it. The park invites visitors to enjoy its peaceful natural beauty with horse or boat rides or fishing and snorkeling excursions. The river flows into the bay of Matanzas next to the Morrillo Castle, built in 1720.

This distinctive, slate-blue building was built in 1838 for the wealthy del Junco family and since 1980 has housed a collection of artifacts, photographs, memorabilia and tools—some of them gruesome—chronicling the sugar and slave industries, on which the city's wealth was built. 

This once-elegant, arched bridge over the Yumurí Estuary used to set a Parisian, Seine-like scene. Built in 1878, with two imposing carved columns at each end, it connected the barrio of Versalles, named for resident wealthy French coffee planters, and the city. Although it's currently in sad shape, it's still one of the most striking pieces of Matanzas architecture. The Cuban government used to give replicas of the columns as official gifts to visiting dignitaries

This beautifully restored museum is worth a visit for its wide-ranging exhibits on everything from archeology to ethnology to numismatics to colonial weaponry. The museum has a beautiful, bright inner courtyard displaying some lovely, early 19th-century furniture, as well as an ornate horse-drawn hearse. Lots of natural light illuminates the quirky, Victorian-era potpourri of natural-history exhibits, from bugs, butterflies, polymitas (snails with multicolored shells), to preserved fleas in nuptial dress, viewed under a magnifying glass. Antique buttons and buckles, pen nibs, death masks, a Masonic lodge throne in the shape of a peacock. On the historical side, there are the usual photographs of Cárdenas heroes of the wars of independence and the Revolution and a gruesome reminder of the risks rebels took, in the form of the garrote used to strangle victims to death.