10 Best Sights in Camaguey, Central Cuba

Originally erected in 1748, this church was reconstructed in 1848, repaired after a fire in 1906, and renovated yet again in 1998. The clock on its facade was the city's first public timepiece, made in Barcelona in 1773; its current machinery was imported from the United States in 1901. The church's interior has massive square columns and a vaulted ceiling decorated with faded art nouveau frescoes dating from 1915. The painted wooden altar was made in 1909 to replace one destroyed by the 1906 fire, but the paintings on the walls around it date from the 18th and 19th centuries. To the right of the altar is the Santo Sepulcro (Holy Sepulchre): a Christ figure in a glass casket that was made in 1762 using the silver from 23,000 Mexican coins donated by parishioners. It's carried out of the cathedral and back every Good Friday in a religious procession that was prohibited for nearly four decades. The crypts beneath the altar have been partially excavated and converted into a tiny museum of tombs, icons, and other antiquities; it's not for the claustrophobic. If the church is closed, enter through the convent next door.

This yellow colonial building with a high wooden balcony was probably one of the tallest structures in town when Ignacio Agramonte was born to a wealthy ranching family here in 1841. Agramonte grew to become a general in the Ten Years War. When he was killed in battle in 1873, popular acclamation elevated him to the rank of hero. Though only half of the original house remains, it has been restored and converted into a museum. Its courtyard has a tinajón in every corner, and upstairs rooms are furnished with period pieces or filled with displays about the wars for independence.

Camagüey's cathedral, on the southeastern edge of Parque Ignacio Agramonte, was built in fits and starts between 1735 and 1864. The most recent of several renovations took 15 years and included replacing the wood-beam ceiling. Its refurbished exterior is an attractive beige and yellow. The most impressive aspect of the spacious interior is the large wood-and-marble altar, behind which shine stained glass and a statue of the Virgin Mary.

On the eastern edge of Plaza de San Juan de Dios, the old hospital now holds the offices of several cultural organizations. In the portico of its large garden, you'll find a simple museum with exhibits on the building's history, some old photos, and surgical instruments from days of yore—thank goodness for modern medicine. It's worth a quick look if you have a curiosity for the history of medicine. More interesting is the view from the roof.

The restored exterior of this 18th-century Baroque church dedicated to Our Lady of Solitude leads to its well-preserved interior. Thick, square columns rise into high arches decorated with lovely floral frescoes, above which is a mudejar wooden ceiling with ornate carved beams. According to legend, a statue of the Virgin fell from a wagon at this spot in the late 1600s; seeing it as a sign from heaven, the locals built a hermitage for it, which was later replaced by this church, completed in 1776.

Camagüey's oldest church was built in 1728 to replace the original (1686) St. John's. It underwent some structural changes in 1847 and an extensive restoration in 1986. Its simple, traditional interior has a terra-cotta floor, white-stucco walls, and a sloped wooden ceiling. Four ancient hardwood altars stand along the walls, each of them dedicated to a different saint—St. John's is the second on the left. The main altar is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and is unique in that the Holy Spirit is represented as a man instead of as the usual dove.

Originally the city's central square, or Plaza de las Armas, this didn't become a proper park until 1912. Note the bronze statue of Agramonte on his steed at its center. In the park's southwestern corner is a 19th-century house that's now the Casa de la Trova, whose courtyard hosts performances by local musicians every day but Monday. The Neoclassical building to the north is the biblioteca (library); a few doors farther north is the Palacio Municipal (town hall), which was originally erected in 1730 but almost completely rebuilt in 1906; local artists often exhibit in its foyer. The royal palms that stand at each corner of the park were planted as surreptitious monuments to four freedom fighters executed by Spain during the War of Independence. You'll find the requisite tinajones here too.

Before the Revolution, the Workers Plaza was known as the Plaza de la Merced, after the church and convent that define its eastern edge. (Older people still refer to it by its former moniker.) A large mural of Che Guevara's eternally youthful visage stares past the ancient facade of La Merced in that distinctively Cuban juxtaposition of tradition and revolution. A kapok tree towers over the plaza's center, and in the southwest corner stands the stately La Popular, built in 1928 and the seat of a local cultural society.

This splendid cobbled square, surrounded by meticulously restored 18th- and 19th-century buildings (most still private homes), has been declared a national monument.