Cuba Guide
Cienfuegos and Villa Clara
Museo Provincial
Address: Parque José Martí
Opening time: Tues– Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 9am–1pm
Price: $2CUC
The Museo Provincial, housed in a blue balconied building, was founded in 1892 as a casino. Downstairs there are dry collections of rocks, shells and bones found throughout the province, as well as a couple of slightly more substantial displays of colonial-era furniture. A room for temporary art exhibitions, showcasing works by local, national and occasionally international artists, is the most engaging section on the ground floor. Upstairs there is another mishmash of exhibits, from firearms used in the revolutionary wars and a nineteenth-century iron to a bullet-making machine and a model of the square outside. More coherent is the room consisting of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century furniture, paintings and memorabilia which once belonged to the relatively rich and famous in Cienfuegos.