![]() And sexy bars like Privé_and_Madrigal(a boho retreat that occupies part of filmmaker Rafael Rosales’s house) draw hip foreigners and young local elites.Īmong Havana’s privileged class are artists and writers who can, to a certain extent, make provocative creative statements. El Cocinero, a swinging 2013 addition to the culinary scene, is located in a defunct factory, its entrance staircase coiling up the complex’s smokestack. Three popular examples are _ Le Chansonnier,_a crisply modernized 1860s dwelling dappled with contemporary art the gastronomically inventive_Atelier and the heralded_La Guarida, which is set in a dilapidated mansion that starred in the 1994 movie Strawberry and Chocolate. Not only can Cubans now buy and sell residential real estate, they can also legally operate *paladares,*or home-based restaurants. ![]() Since Raúl Castro became the head of the government, in 2008, he has relaxed the country’s Communist rigor a bit. Life is improving, though at a micro pace. ![]() Harold Koda, a Metropolitan Museum of Art curator who recently returned from Havana starry-eyed, likens the city to “a tropical St. “Cubans do have a tendency to exaggerate-and not just when it comes to talking about baseball,” says Havana architect and urban planner Miguel Coyula, chuckling. ![]() Department of the Treasury, such as Abercrombie & Kent and Smithsonian Journeys.) Around every corner, spectacular* edificios* come into sight, each more brashly painted and more flamboyantly ornamented than the last. (American visits are largely restricted to educational outings led by operators licensed by the U.S. With a Panama hat and candy-color linen jackets, I traveled to the city for a week in February, joining an architectural tour organized by the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation and Academic Arrangements Abroad. “Havana is an archive of every interesting style of Western architecture, especially those between 18,” says Cuban-American architect Hermes Mallea, the Manhattan-based author of Great Houses of Havana, as we sip bracing café cubanos at Havana’s elegant neoclassical Hotel Saratoga.
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