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All Cuba Havana Hotel Nacional de Cuba

Hotel Nacional de Cuba

Once a favorite playground for the world's most illustrious guests, Hotel Nacional's secret weapons and bunkers reveal a more menacing side to its golden history.

Havana, Cuba

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Jason Williams
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Hotel Nacional at dusk.   Flickr user ahisgett
Hotel Nacional   Flickr user Alexander Bonilla
Hotel Nacional from below.   Wikimedia user nowmanradio
Elevators and lobby.   Wikimedia user FDBK
Hotel Nacional Bar   Flickr user vxla
Inside the lobby.   Wikimedia user Velvet
The hotel’s bar features portraits of celebrities who have visited it.   siewch / Atlas Obscura User
View of the Hotel Nacional from the path leading to its bunker   Polly Allen
View from the rear patio   caroli02 / Atlas Obscura User
Formal dining room with live musicians   caroli02 / Atlas Obscura User
Lobby   caroli02 / Atlas Obscura User
Walking through the gardens of the Hotel Nacional   Polly Allen
Yuri Gagarin, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut, Hotel Nacional   Bartokfriend / Atlas Obscura User
One of the Mafia rooms (where members of the Mafia stayed) covered on the official hotel tour.   Polly Allen
January 2017   ccesare / Atlas Obscura User
January 2017   ccesare / Atlas Obscura User
Hotel Nacional, Havana, Cuba   ccesare / Atlas Obscura User
Hotel Nacional, Havana, Cuba   ccesare / Atlas Obscura User
Hotel Nacional, Havana, Cuba   ccesare / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Long ranked among the world’s finest hotels, the Hotel Nacional de Cuba had been a playground for the upper crust of society when life was golden, and survived wars both real and threatened – with relics to prove it. 

Built in 1930 and operated by Americans until the Cuban Revolution of 1959, its eclectic architectural mishmash of Art Deco, Moorish, and neo-colonial styles distinguised the hotel from its Caribbean contemporaries. Glamorous guests arrived immediately and haven't stopped since. Its guestbook reads like a who’s-who of superstars from all walks of culture; few places on Earth can claim to have hosted Mickey Mantle, Ernest Hemingway, Yuri Gagarin, Jean Paul Sartre, Naomi Campbell, and Jesse Ventura. Perhaps most notorious of all, the hotel played host to a mob summit of the Cosa Nostra families in 1946, which Francis Ford Coppola would later dramatize in The Godfather: Part II.

Glamor and mafia aside, the Hotel Nacional had always been chased by a darker reality that remains palpable to this day. From colonial powers, unaffiliated pirates, and nuclear terror, the hotel seemed destined to be under siege.  

Two giant cannons used in costal defense remain on prominent display, reminding visitors that the hotel was constructed atop the site of the 18th century Santa Clara Battery. Daily historic tours of the hotel touch on more delicate, recent history in the form of broad mentions of a nuclear bunker on premises, dating back to 1962 when Hotel Nacional served as Fidel Castro’s headquarters for aerial defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Around this time, anti-aircraft machinery was installed on the lawn and reinforced trenches were dug beneath the gardens, traces of which still dot the grounds.

With over eighty years of the good life and skirmishes under its belt, the Hotel Nacional is now a state-sanctioned national monument where people from all walks of life can book a night or two to commune with the giants of history, no matter which version you prefer.

Related Tags

Hotels Nuclear Bunkers Places To Stay

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Added By

JasonW

Edited By

littlebrumble, Bartokfriend, pollytravellingcalavera, caroli02...

  • littlebrumble
  • Bartokfriend
  • pollytravellingcalavera
  • caroli02
  • siewch
  • ccesare

Published

July 17, 2013

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Sources
  • http://www.hotelnacionaldecuba.com/en/history.asp
  • http://www.cubaheritage.org/articles.asp?lID=1&artID=222
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Nacional_de_Cuba
Hotel Nacional de Cuba
Havana
Cuba
23.143056, -82.380556
Visit Website

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