Havana ( hə-VAN-ə, hə-VAH-nə; Spanish: La Habana [la aˈβana] ⓘ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. It is the most populous city, the largest by area, and the second-largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean region. The population in 2021 was 2,142,939 inhabitants, and its area is 728.26 km2 (281.18 sq mi) for the capital city and 8,475.57 km2 for the metropolitan zone. Its official population dropped to 1,749,964 inhabitants by the end of 2024.
Founded in 1519 by the Spanish Empire, Havana overtook Santiago in the mid-16th century due to the geostrategic advantages of its harbor, becoming the capital of the island in 1552. It became a fundamental place for the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas, and a stopping point for galleons returning to the Iberian Peninsula, and walls and forts were built to protect it from naval attacks. Havana is the seat of the Cuban government and ministries, the headquarters of various businesses and home to more than 100 diplomatic offices. In 2009, the city had the third-highest income in the country.
Contemporary Havana can be described as three cities in one: Old Havana, Vedado and the newer suburban districts. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay, which is entered through a narrow inlet and which divides into three main harbors: Marimelena, Guanabacoa and Antares. The Almendares River traverses the city from south to north, entering the Straits of Florida a few miles west of the bay.
Havana attracts over a million tourists annually, 1,276,627 international tourists in 2010, a 30% increase from 2005. Old Havana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982. Havana is noted for its history, culture, architecture and monuments. As typical of Cuba, Havana has a tropical climate.
Etymology
In 1514, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founded the town of San Cristóbal de la Habana, which means 'Saint Christopher of the Habana'. It has been theorized that the name is derived from Habaguanex, the chief of a local Taíno-speaking tribe about whom little else is known.
In Spanish, the name was commonly written as Havana or Hauana, as found in historical documents. The spelling "Habana" with a "b" began to be used more frequently starting in 1798, and it became the standard form by 1821.
When Habana was adapted into English, the ⟨b⟩ was switched to a ⟨v⟩ because of a linguistic phenomenon known as betacism, which is an assimilation of the voiced bilabial plosive and voiced labiodental fricative sounds that occurs in most modern Spanish dialects. Usage of the word Havana in literature understandably peaked during the Spanish–American War, but it also represents a type of cigar, a color, and a type of rabbit as well as the city. Havana is the prevailing name for the city found in English-language dictionaries.
History
16th century
Beginnings
Diego Velázquez originally founded Havana in 1514, on the opposite coast, 69 km (43 mi) south of its current location. An early map of Cuba drawn in 1514 places it at the mouth of the Mayabeque River, now the town of Batabanó. This settlement failed, primarily due to the low and swampy nature of the land around the river. All attempts by the Spanish to establish a settlement in this area ultimately failed.
Between 1514 and 1519, the Spanish established the first settlements on the northern coast of Cuba near present-day Havana. One of them was called La Chorrera, on the current site of the Tower of La Chorrera, next to the mouth of the Almendares River. This settlement was in a better location than the first on the southern coast, as the surrounding land was at a higher elevation and the landscape was less marshy. La Chorrera eventually became the neighborhoods of Vedado and Miramar.
The town that became Havana originated adjacent to what was then called Puerto de Carenas (literally, 'Careening Port'), in 1519. The quality of the Havana Harbor and its surrounding bay is what led to its change of location.
Pánfilo de Narváez gave Havana – the sixth town founded in Cuba – its name: San Cristóbal de la Habana. San Cristóbal is the patron saint of Havana. The first cities founded on the island served as little more than bases for the conquista of other lands.
Attacks
As Havana began as a trading port in the Caribbean, it suffered regular attacks by buccaneers, pirates, and French corsairs. The first attack and resultant burning of the city was by the French corsair Jacques de Sores in 1555. Such attacks convinced the Spanish Crown to fund the construction of the first fortresses in the main cities – not only to counteract the pirates and corsairs, but also to exert more control over commerce in the West Indies and to limit the extensive contrabando (smuggling) that had arisen due to the trade restrictions imposed by the Casa de Contratación of Seville (the crown-controlled trading house that held a monopoly on trade in the New World).
Ships from all over the New World carried products first to Havana, to be taken by the fleet to Spain. The thousands of ships that gathered in the city's bay fueled Havana's agriculture and manufacturing industries, since they had to be supplied with food, water, and other products needed to traverse the ocean.
On 20 December 1592, King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City. Later on, the city would be officially designated as "Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies" by the Spanish Crown. In the meantime, efforts to build or improve the defensive infrastructure of the city continued.
17th century
Havana expanded greatly during the 17th century. New buildings were constructed from the most abundant materials of the island, primarily wood, combining various Iberian architectural styles as well as borrowing extensively from Canarian characteristics. During this period, the city built many civic monuments and religious buildings, including the El Morro Castle, Convent of St Augustin, the Chapel of the Humilladero, the Fountain of Dorotea de la Lunin La Chorrera, the Church of the Holy Angel, the Hospital de San Lázaro, the Monastery of Santa Teresa, and the Convent of San Felipe Neri.
In 1649, a fatal yellow fever epidemic brought from Cartagena killed a third of the population in Havana. In 1674, construction of the city walls started as part of the fortification efforts. It would be completed by 1740.
18th century
By the middle of the 18th century, Havana had more than seventy thousand inhabitants, making it the third-largest city in the Americas, ranking behind Lima and Mexico City but ahead of Boston and New York City.
During this time, Havana was the most important port in the Spanish West Indies, as it had facilities where ships could be refitted before continuing their voyage. By 1740, it had become Spain's largest and most active shipyard and the only drydock in the New World.
Seven Years' War
The city was sieged by the British during the Siege of Havana in the Seven Years' War. The episode began on 6 June 1762, when at dawn, a British fleet comprising more than 50 ships and a combined force of over 11,000 men of the Royal Navy and Army, sailed into Cuban waters and made an amphibious landing east of Havana.
After the siege, the British immediately opened up Havana to trade with their North American and Caribbean colonies, causing a rapid transformation of Cuban society. Less than a year after Havana was seized, the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763 by the three warring powers, ending the war. The treaty ceded Spanish Florida to the British in exchange for the return of Havana to Spain.
After regaining the city, the Spanish transformed Havana into the most heavily fortified city in the Americas; similar to Cartagena, a city that under the leadership of Blas de Lezo defeated a British invasion of 30,000 sailors during the Battle of Cartagena in 1741. Construction began on what was to become the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña, the third biggest Spanish fortification in the New World after Castillo San Cristóbal and Castillo San Felipe del Morro, both located in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
On 15 January 1796, the remains of Christopher Columbus were transported to Cuba from Santo Domingo. They rested there until 1898, when they were transferred to the Seville Cathedral after Spain's loss of Cuba in the Spanish-American War.
19th century
As trade between the Caribbean and North America increased in the early 19th century, Havana became a flourishing city. Havana's theaters featured the most distinguished actors of the day, and prosperity among the burgeoning middle-class led to expensive new classical mansions being erected. During this period, Havana became known as the "Paris of the Antilles".
In 1837, the first railroad in the country was constructed in Havana, a 51 km (32 mi) stretch between Havana and Bejucal, which was used to transport sugar from the valley of Güines to the port of Havana. With this, Cuba became the seventh country in the world to have a railroad, and the first Latin American and Spanish-speaking country to do so.
Throughout the century, Havana continued constructing additional cultural facilities, such as the Tacón Theatre, which later became the Gran Teatro de La Habana. In 1863, the city walls were knocked down so that the city could be expanded.
Slavery in Cuba was legal until 1886, leading to interest from slavers in the American South who were looking for ways to preserve a slave state. The Knights of the Golden Circle proposed a 1200 mile-radius 'Golden Circle' where slavery would still be permitted. The circle would be centered on Havana and encompass much of North America.
After the Confederate States of America were defeated in the American Civil War in 1865, many former slaveholders fled to Havana on ships, including Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin and Vice President and Confederate Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge. Many refugees stayed in Cuba until Andrew Johnson granted amnesty to former Confederates in 1868.
Cuban independence
The sinking of the USS Maine battleship in the Havana Harbor was the immediate cause of the Spanish–American War. In Cuba, the war was the culmination of its war of independence with Spain, which was already underway for three years. On 12 August 1898, Spain relinquished sovereignty over Cuba, thus ending Spanish presence in the Americas.
20th century
Republican era
Havana became the capital of the newly independent Republic of Cuba in 1902. The city held the inauguration of Cuba's first president, Tomás Estrada Palma, who was considered to have upheld the highest standards of administrative integrity during the time of the Republic.
In July 1940, during World War II, Cuba hosted the Havana Conference, where representatives from the U.S. and 20 other countries in Latin America met in Havana and agreed to a policy of defending European-owned colonies and dependencies in North and South America, if the host country fell to the Axis powers.
In 1958, Cuba was a relatively wealthy country by Latin American standards, and in some cases even by world standards. It had the third-highest GDP per capita in Latin America in the late 1950s, surpassed by only Venezuela and Uruguay.
Cuba implemented perhaps some of the largest labor protection laws for workers in the Americas, including bans on dismissal and protection against mechanization. These were obtained in large part "at the cost of the unemployed and the peasants", leading to economic disparities. Between 1933 and 1958, Cuba significantly expanded economic regulations, causing further problems.
Unemployment became an issue as graduates entering the workforce could not find jobs. The middle class, which was then comparable to that of the United States in terms of wealth, became increasingly dissatisfied with unemployment and political persecution, yet labor unions continued supporting Batista until the very end.
Although Cuba had the highest ratio of hospital beds to people in the Caribbean (88 beds for every 300 people), around 80% of them were in Havana. Outside the capital, there was only one rural hospital, equipped with 10 beds. Prostitution in Cuba grew significantly during the first half of the 20th century, and was mainly centered in Havana. The number of prostitutes in the city grew from 4,000 in 1912 to over 11,000 in the late 1950s, earning the city a reputation.
Post-revolution
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the new revolutionary government under Fidel Castro began to improve social services, public housing, and official buildings. Nevertheless, Castro's abrupt expropriation of all private property and industry (under a Marxist-Leninist model), followed by the U.S. embargo against Cuba in 1960, led to shortages that hit Cuba and Havana hard.
By 1966–68, the Cuban government had nationalized all privately owned business entities in Cuba, down to "certain kinds of small retail forms of commerce" as per law No. 1076.
An economic downturn occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The two countries had close relations, and when Soviet subsidies ended, billions of dollars that Cuba was receiving from the Soviet Union were lost. Many believed the revolutionary government would soon collapse, as happened to the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe.
21st century
Tourism in Cuba has brought foreign investors to remodel the nationalized Manzana de Gómez building and turn it into the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana, a 5-star hotel, showing efforts to develop the city's hospitality industry. In Old Havana, a number of streets and squares have been rehabilitated in an effort to attract more tourism.