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Trinidad de Cuba
With its cobbled streets and russet-tiled and Carrara marble- paved mansions, Cuba’s third- oldest settlement, founded in 1514, is today an enchanting guardian of the Spanish colonial past. About 75 km (47 miles) east of Cienfuegos, the town was declared by UNESCO in 1988 a World Heritage Site—along with the sugar mills and slave quarters that made its fortune in the nearby Valle de Los Ingenios. Governor Diego Velázquez founded La Villa de Ia Santisima Trinidad in the belief that there were rich gold mines in an adjacent valley. To bless the under takings of the colonists, Father Bartolomé de las Casas said Trinidad’s first Mass, before becoming Apostle of the Indies on his lone and fruitless anti-slave campaign. For his conquest of Mexico, Hernán Cortés recruited the town’s fortune hunters disgruntled with gold-finds sifted in small quantities from surrounding river beds. Others stayed to breed cattle and plant more lucrative tobacco and sugar. Boom years in the mid-I 9th century enabled planters to build the grand houses that grace Trinidad today. Plaza Mayor
With its lofty royal palm trees, the square presents a truly majes tic setting for its aristocratic man sions and parish church, most of them in 18th-century neoclassical style and rebuilt in the 19th. The Iglesia Parroquial de Ia Santisima Trinidad dominates the northeast side of the square. The nearby Palacio Brunet, the splendid residence of a Spanish count, now houses the Museo Romántico displaying the sometimes over- opulent furnishings of the 19th- century sugar magnates. On the northwest side of the square, the Archaeology Muse um, devoted to Indian artefacts and natural history, is named after Alexander von Humboldt, the great German scientist-explorer who stayed here in 1801. On the southeast side, the Casa de San chez Iznaga has been linked to its 18th-century neighbour to contain the Museo de Arquitectura Trinitaria, presenting other typi cal interior décors of the town’s rich planters. And in the Palacio OrtIz on the southwest side, local artists exhibit their works in what is now the GalerIa de Arte Universal. The Side Streets.
Much of the real charm of Trinidad is to be discovered in wandering away from the main square. South of Plaza Mayor on Calle Colon, there is a delightful open-air market of arts and crafts, with a small Fábrica de Tabacos nearby. Southwest at Plaza Santa Ana, a Spanish prison has been converted into a cultural centre for ceramics, sculpture and paintings, where you can also attend performances of the Trinidad Folk Ensemble.
On the northeast edge of town, at the end of Calle Simon Bolivar, you can get a bird’s-eye view from the ruins of Trinidad’s old est church, 18th-century Ermita de La Popa. Playa Ancón
This beach resort 12 km (7 miles) south of town makes a popular tourist base from which to visit Trinidad and nearby sights. Ancon, meaning a horse’s hind- leg, refers to the shape of a sailors’ black rock landmark at Punta Maria Aguilar at the west end of the peninsula. The resort has 4km (2.5 miles) of beautiful white sandy beaches and a good offshore reef for sCuba diving and snorkelling. Birdwatchers make for the tidal flats between Ancón and the fishing port of Casilda. Valle de Los ingenios
The picturesque valley beginning 8 km (5 miles) east of Trinidad is dotted with the ruins of sugar mills (ingenios), manor houses, slave watchtowers, slave quarters and warehouses where Trinidad amassed its wealth in the 19th century. Most were destroyed by insurgent armies marching west wards in the wars of independence. A major landmark is the late 18th-century Manaca lznaga sugar plantation 16km (10 miles) east of Trinidad. Next to the manor house, the watchtower, 44 m (144 ft) high, from which the foremen looked for slaves and runaways is an eloquent monument to the huge fortune which Pedro Iznaga made from the slave trade rather than from sugar. His house is now a restaurant and bar.
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Convent
Church
Main Square
Water fall
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