Cuba’s Habanarte Festival Gives Foreign Tourists Glimpse at Local Culture

Cuba hosted the Habanarte Festival evoking the life of famous American writer Ernest Hemingway. The writer lived in Cuba for 20 years and wrote some of his best known works.

Habanarte festival sought to provide foreign tourists with the chance to know about all the local cultural expressions. The slogan for Habanarte Festival was “All art at once”.

His house in Finca Vigia, Havana, hosted foreign and domestic visitors participating in tours, which were scheduled at the festival, to visit places with heritage value in Havana.

Many sites of the coastal community of Cojimar and the streets, buildings and people of Havana fed the imagination of the author of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and even were the stage of his works.

According to director of the house museum, Ada Rosa Alfonso, Hemingway always sought to find good places for his writing, such as France, Spain, among others. But it was in Cuba where he lived and worked more than anywhere else, she said.

Finca Vigia, built in 1887 by Catalan architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer, still has the aura of the legendary novelist: his favorite chair, his large library, the dining room resembling a Spanish tavern and his dearest yacht Pilar.

The house is surrounded by lush tropical vegetation predominant in several hectares of the San Francisco de Paula community, some 15 kilometers from downtown Havana.

Various tours on different subjects across museums in Havana were included in the program of the Habanarte festival, organized by cultural institutions and tourist agency Paradiso.