4 Best Sights in Havana, Cuba

Even those convinced that they've outgrown their thirst for Hemingway will feel a flutter of youthful romanticism on a visit to Finca Vigía (Lookout Farm), the American Nobel Prize–winner's home from 1939 to 1961. The excellent guides will show you his weight charts—faithfully kept on the bathroom wall and never varying much from 242.5 pounds—a first edition of Kenneth Tynan's Bull Fever by the toilet; the lizard preserved in formaldehyde and honored for having "died well" in a battle with one of Hemingway's five-dozen cats; the pool where Ava Gardner swam naked; Hemingway's favorite chair (ask about what happened to people who dared sit in it); his sleek powerboat, El Pilar; and much, much more.

This house is named for the obra pía (pious work) with orphans that was carried out here in colonial times. Its elaborately wrought Baroque doorway is thought to have been carved in Cádiz around 1686. The architecture of the interior patio is based on North African fondouks (inns) and, later, of Spanish corralas (patios). There's much to see here: arches of different sizes and shapes, vases decorated with paintings by Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga, as well as a collection of old sewing machines and needlecraft paraphernalia.

The Alejo Carpentier artifacts (including the car he used in Paris) are still there, but locked up in a special room that you must get permission ahead of time to see.

Just past the Parque de la Fraternidad Americana's southwest corner is this Italianate mansion built in 1840 by the Spanish merchant Domingo de Aldama. His son, Miguel de Aldama, worked for Cuban autonomy from Spain until his palace was sacked by the Spanish authorities in 1869. Don Miguel fled to the United States, where he continued his work as an activist for Cuban independence until his death in 1888. The building isn't open to visitors, but the massive columns and monumental size of the place are striking proof of the economic power of the 19th-century Cuban sugar barons, dubbed the zacarocracia by Cuban journalists and historians.