Museo Ciencias Naturales
Installed in a fantastical Moorish palace, dripping with carved stone griffins, this museum is even more fascinating for its outlandish architecture and quaint, old-fashioned displays than for its hodgepodge, natural history collection. Built by a wealthy doctor in 1909, this private residence was known as the Guasch Palace. After the Revolution, the doctor's son "gifted" the building to the state and it was officially renamed after a self-taught, 19th-century Cuban scientist named Tranquilino Sandalio de Noda. The exhibits include dusty dioramas of desiccated stuffed specimens, from antelope to zebra, plus an array of mounted animal heads on the walls. There's a room dedicated to butterfly and moth collections, and a shell collection is displayed in showcases held up by carved seahorses. The delightful surprise here is the interior garden where, amid Art Nouveau painted floor tiles, intricately carved wooden doors and tropical plants, a giant concrete model of a demonically grinning tyrannosaurus Rex reigns.
Pay the extra to bring in your camera; there are photo ops everywhere you look.
Across the street from the museum there are two side-by-side, brightly colored restaurants competing for lunch business.
