Where to Stay in Havana

The UNESCO World Heritage core of Havana, where four baroque plazas, de Armas, Vieja, de la Catedral, and de San Francisco, anchor a grid of 16th-century palaces. The smell of roasting coffee drifts from open-fronted cafes while vintage American cars idle past facades of crumbling ochre plaster. After dusk the plazas fill with the sound of son music and the smoky scent of hand-rolled cigars sold from wooden trays, and the baroque stonework glows warm amber under floodlights.

The lived-in stretch between Old Havana and Vedado where Habaneros go about daily life with no particular regard for tourists. Street markets fill Galiano and Neptuno with the smell of frying garlic and diesel exhaust. The sound of domino tiles slapping on plastic tables carries from doorways where old men fan themselves through the afternoon heat. Havana's best non-tourist paladares are tucked into ground-floor apartments along these streets, identifiable by the smoky scent of slow-cooked ropa vieja drifting onto the pavement.

Havana's 1950s boomtown district is a grid of wide leafy boulevards lined with modernist apartment blocks, Mob-era casino hotels, and the city's most imposing revolutionary monuments. At its northern edge the Malecón curves west past the Hotel Nacional's clifftop gardens; inland, La Rampa rises past Coppelia ice cream park toward the vast white Colón necropolis. Havana's best live jazz clubs and Casa de la Música are both in this district.

West of Vedado across the Almendares River, Miramar was Havana's pre-revolution millionaires' suburb and is now home to embassies, joint-venture business hotels, and the city's quietest central streets. Fifth Avenue runs straight and tree-lined through the heart of the district under a canopy of ceiba and flamboyan that turns the afternoon light green and gold and keeps temperatures noticeably cooler than the dense colonial center.

Head west from Miramar through Siboney and Cubanacán and the city dissolves into a coastal suburb. The Diplomatic Quarter fades into quiet lanes lined with mid-century ranch houses. Mornings smell of garden jasmine and bakery bread, not exhaust. Streets are wide enough for real trees. The pace drops.

East of the harbor tunnel the coast opens into Cojímar fishing village, where Hemingway tied up Pilar, then rolls into the long sandy sweep of Playas del Este. Santa María del Mar, Guanabo, and Tarará stretch for kilometers. Water is clear turquoise. Sand is pale and fine. The scent is sunscreen and salt, not fumes. Havana's skyline floats as a faint silhouette across the harbor.