Cienfuegos — Paseo del Prado

Cienfuegos was founded in 1819 by French settlers from Bordeaux and Nantes who were granted land by the Spanish Crown, and the city retains an architectural flavour unlike anywhere else in Cuba — a planned grid of wide boulevards, marble-edged promenades and arcaded streets that feels more Mediterranean than Caribbean.

The main artery is the broad, tree-lined Paseo del Prado, which runs from the main square down to the bay in a straight 1 km promenade lined with bronze lampposts and cast-iron benches, its central divider shaded by royal palms. At its bay end stands the ornate former Palacio de Ferrer, now a cultural centre, and the Cementerio de los Tmeros where the independence hero José Martí's ashes were temporarily interred before their return to Cuba.

The city's bay is one of the deepest natural harbours in the Caribbean, a fact that attracted French merchants and later American investors and made Cienfuegos one of the most commercially vibrant ports in 19th-century Cuba. The bay is still active with freight traffic and the working waterfront behind the main boulevard gives an unguarded look at Cuban port operations — Soviet-era trucks unloading at state warehouses, fishermen mending nets in the afternoon heat, and the constant movement of small boats between the city waterfront and the offshore keys. The arcaded street that runs parallel to the bay, calle 37, is lined with small restaurants serving fried fish and malanga chips at plastic tables, frequented by dock workers and local families rather than tourists.

Cienfuegos was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005 — the most recent Cuban inscription — for its outstanding example of 19th-century urban planning applied to a Caribbean port city, combining Enlightenment principles with Creole adaptation.

The Arco de Triunfo, the only triumphal arch in Cuba, stands at the head of the Prado and was modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, commissioned in 1890 to commemorate the founding of the city. Nearby, the Teatro Tomás Terry, a jewel-box of a theatre with excellent acoustics, was built in the 1880s with a facade of imported Italian marble and hosts regular performances of Cuban music and ballet. The entire historic centre is compact enough to walk in an afternoon, but the city rewards slower exploration — sitting on the Prado in the late afternoon, when the temperature drops and the bay breeze picks up, is one of the more pleasurable urban experiences in provincial Cuba.

Cienfuegos is the only Cuban World Heritage Site whose urban plan is derived directly from French Enlightenment urbanism rather than Spanish colonial precedents.

The deep-water bay and working harbour provide a vivid contrast to the tourist-oriented streets of Old Havana.

The Arco de Triunfo, the only triumphal arch in Cuba, stands at the head of the Paseo del Prado and was modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.