Plaza de Armas and Castillo de la Real Fuerza - La Habana, Cuba
Posted by: 
denben
N 23° 08.410 W 082° 20.967
17Q E 361840 N 2559676
Plaza de Armas and Castillo de la Real Fuerza are located near the place where the city of Havana is said to have been founded. A small chapel, El Templete, was built in 1828 to mark the spot.
Waymark Code: WMVA4C
Location: Cuba
Date Posted: 03/21/2017
Views: 5
Havana's oldest square was laid out in the early 1520s, soon after the city's foundation, and was originally known as Plaza de Iglesia after a church – the Parroquial Mayor – that once stood on the site of the present-day Palacio de los Capitanes Generales. In the center of the square, which is lined with royal palms and hosts a daily (except Sundays) secondhand book market, is a marble statue of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the man who set Cuba on the road to independence in 1868. The statue replaced one of unpopular Spanish king Ferdinand VII in 1955.
The Castillo de la Real Fuerza (English: Castle of the Royal Force) is a star fort on the western side of the harbour in Havana, set back from the entrance, and bordering the Plaza de Armas. Originally built to defend against attack by pirates, it suffered from a poor strategic position, being too far inside the bay. The fort is considered to be the oldest stone fort in the Americas, and was listed in 1982 as part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of "Old Havana and its Fortifications".
The coordinates are from the statue of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in the center of Plaza de Armas.
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