Chat in Havana

Havana is the capital of the Republic of Cuba, its largest city, the main port, its economic-cultural center and its main tourist pole. It is the most populated city in the country, with a population of 2 106 146 inhabitants according to data from 2012, and the third most populated in the Caribbean region. As the capital of Cuba, the city is the official headquarters of the superior organs of the State and the Cuban Government, of all the central agencies and of almost all national companies and associations. In addition, it has the largest number of branches and parent companies of foreign entities based in Cuba.

Founded in 1514 by the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez, under the foundational name of Villa de San Cristóbal de La Habana, it was one of the first seven villas founded by the Spanish Crown on the island. Due to its privileged location, facing the North Atlantic coasts, and the characteristics of its bay, the then village became an important commercial center, which is why it was subjected to attacks and looting by pirates and corsairs during the first years of the sixteenth century. In 1561, the Crown ordered that the town be the place of concentration of Spanish ships from the American colonies before crossing the ocean together, thus building, for their protection, military defenses at the entrance to the Bay of Havana and in strategic places, making the city one of the best defended in the New World.

On December 20,1592, Philip II gave the town the title of "city", twenty-nine years after the governor of Cuba moved her to his official residence from Santiago de Cuba, seat of the government of the island until then. In 1634 by Royal Decree he was declared "Key of the New World and Safeguard of the East Indies" and in 1665, he was granted the right to show his own shield, in which were represented, through three towers, the fortresses that defended the city. The sugar and the commerce influenced remarkably in that during the centuries XIX and XX the city experienced not only a deep process of expansion of its territory but also of demographic, socio-economic and cultural growth, factors that turned to Havana into one of the richest and most notorious cities of the zone of Central America and the Caribbean. New neighborhoods such as El Cerro and El Vedado emerged during that phase, where the new havanan bourgeoisie would concentrate.

Meanwhile, the old areas of the city would become areas of tenement house and citadels. It was not until the 1950s that the current form of the capital began to take shape, as a result of the appearance of the speculative concept of horizontal property as well as the establishment of urban centers and sub-centers throughout that century. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution and the implementation of national transformation projects brought with it the increase of emigration to the cities, provoking the demographic boom in Havana, and with it its expansion, this time towards the eastern and southern areas.

Its historical, architectural and especially cultural heritage, expressed in the fusion between Europeans, Africans and aborigines at the beginning, together with other more contemporary ethnic and cultural components, make the city an important recipient of international tourism and the center of the national life. Its historic center, declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1982, is today one of the best preserved architectural complexes in Latin America. Among its most representative monuments are the Cathedral of Havana, the Plaza de Armas, the Morro Castle, the Museum of the Revolution, the National Palace of Fine Arts, the Great Theater of Havana, the Capitol, the Plaza de la Revolution and the Malecón, perhaps the most internationally recognized symbol of the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana

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