Santiago de Cuba Transforms its Founding Ring 505 Years Later

The renovation works, directed by the Office of the Curator of the City (OCC), in the old Plaza de Armas surrounds those that take place opposite, in the headquarters of the Municipal Council where the José Martí First Front Museum is being built.

Omar López, National Architecture and Cultural Heritage Prize-Winner and OCC director, alluded to the imperative of enhancing such a historical, patrimonial and architectural urban environment, where the triumph of the Cuban Revolution was announced to the world by Fidel Castro on January 1, 1959.

Lopez highlighted the cultural lineage of these settings with the Holy Metropolitan Basilica Cathedral Church, the first one in Cuba, which sheltered the first Cuban musician, Esteban Salas, and St. Ecce Homo, considered as the original painting piece in the island.

He also referred to the values of one of the oldest dwellings in Latin America, also called as Diego Velázquez’s Casa del Adelantado, which houses the Museum of Cuban Historical Environment, with remarkable virtues representative of the first stage of Cuban architecture. (Taken from Prensa Latina)