Top 10 Specialty Museums in Cuba, Cuba

The house where Cuba's greatest novelist, essayist, musicologist, poet, and all-purpose literato set his most famous work, El Siglo de las Luces (The Century of the Lights), is now open as a museum, lecture hall, research facility, library, and cultural center. Alejo Carpentier (1904-80) began as a journalist and professor of music history at Havana's National Conservatory, and went on to publish La Musica en Cuba (Music in Cuba), El Arpa y la Sombra (The Harp and the Shadow), as well as musical scores, librettos, and poetry. The house itself, the Casa de la Condesa de la Reunión, was built in 1809 and renovated in 1878. Classified as Cuban baroque, the building is trimmed in pastel "Havana blue" and has a simple facade and a graceful interior patio with painted ceramic tiles. The collection of Carpentier memorabilia includes his Olympia typewriter, the text he was working on the day before he died, American scholar Sally Harvey's study entitled Carpentier's Proustian Fiction, an interesting engraving of 18th-century Havana, and various manuscripts. COST: $2. Mon.-Sat. 9-5.

The Latin inscription over the main door of this church and convent dedicated to St. Francis reads: non est in toto sanctior orbe locus (there is no holier place on earth). As it's now a museum and concert hall, it may no longer be earth's holiest place, but it certainly is one of the loveliest. Built in the 16th century, in 1730 it was restored in a baroque style, resulting in a richly adorned facade with fluted conchlike tympanums over the doors and windows. Just inside the door you'll see tombs beneath a glass floor panel. (Churches were used as cemeteries until Bishop Espada founded what is now the Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón in 1868, a detail all Cubans seem to know and cherish). Note also the 19th-century grandfather clock made by Tiffany. The rooms to the right of the nave house archaeological finds and art exhibits.