Cuba Guide
Cienfuegos and Villa Clara
Museo Histórico Naval Nacional
Address: A few blocks northwest of Parque José Martí
Opening time: Tues– Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 10am–1pm
Price: $1CUC
A few blocks northwest of Parque José Martí, in a pleasant grassy setting on a small peninsula on the edge of Pueblo Nuevo, the Museo Histórico Naval Nacional contains a more eclectic mix of exhibits than its name suggests. The first section is devoted to the uprising of September 1957 (known as the Levantamiento de 5 de Septiembre), in which local rebels joined forces with Fidel Castro's M-26-7 Movement in a revolt that instigated an insurrectionary coup at the naval barracks, now the museum's buildings and grounds. The revolutionaries held the city for only a few hours before the dictator General Batista sent in some two thousand soldiers and crushed the rebellion in a battle that ended with a shoot-out at the Colegio San Lorenzo on Parque José Martí. As well as various humdrum military possessions, the displays include the bloodstained shirt of one of the rebel marines and a neat little model of the naval base. Rather than the expected rundown of Cuba's nautical past that you might expect, the rest of the museum is a sketchy collection of items related to sea travel and naval warfare, dispersed throughout various displays pertaining to a more general picture of life on the island since pre-Columbian times. These include a small section on natural history and a cabinet full of some fantastic old compasses.