Hostal Conde de Villanueva

Habana Vieja


Restored under the watchful eye of the City Historian in the late 1990s, the former residence of the Count of Villanueva, a 19th-century railway-building magnate, has been converted from a grandiose city mansion into a nine-bedroom hotel with a tobacco-growing theme. Its centerpiece is a foliage-filled inner courtyard complete with resident peacock.

Upstairs suites contain stained-glass windows, chandeliers and arty sculptures; one suite has a whirlpool bathtub. On the mezzanine floor you'll also find one of Havana's best tobacco stores, with an in-house roller.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Habana Vieja attractions

1. Museo de Simón Bolívar

0.02 MILES

A diminutive museum dedicated to Latin America’s great liberator, who remains a perennial hero to most Cubans. Downstairs there are panels containing text…

2. Museo de Bomberos

0.02 MILES

This museum contains antediluvian fire equipment dedicated to 19 Havana firefighters who lost their lives in an 1890 railway blaze.

3. Armería 9 de Abril

0.03 MILES

An old gun shop (now museum) stormed by revolutionaries on the said date in 1958. Mercifully, the armaments are no longer for sale.

4. Statue of Simón Bolívar

0.05 MILES

The corner of Mercaderes and Obrapía has an international flavor, with a bronze statue of Simón Bolívar, the Latin America liberator, in a small park.

5. Casa Oswaldo Guayasamín

0.05 MILES

Casa Oswaldo Guayasamín is an old studio and now a museum for the work of the great Ecuadorian artist, who painted Fidel Castro in numerous poses. The…

6. Casa de África

0.05 MILES

The Casa de África houses sacred objects relating to Santería, including Abakuá masks, collected by ethnographer Fernando Ortíz.

7. Casa de México Benito Juárez

0.05 MILES

The Casa de México Benito Juárez exhibits Mexican folk art and plenty of books but not a lot on Juárez (Mexico’s first indigenous president) himself.

8. Casa de la Obra Pía

0.06 MILES

One of the more muscular sights around Calle Mercaderes is this typical Havana aristocratic residence, constructed around 1648 and rebuilt in 1780…