The Malecón
Eight kilometres of sea wall where the whole city sits in the evening, facing north.
Duration
1 hr 30 min – 3 hrs
Best time
At sunset
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
The Malecón was begun in 1901 under American occupation to protect the city from northerly storms, and it runs eight kilometres from Habana Vieja to Vedado. It is not an ornamental promenade: it is a sea wall, and the waves come over it several times each winter.
It serves as a collective living room. In the late afternoon thousands sit on the parapet — line fishermen, musicians, families, couples with nowhere of their own. It is the most used public space in Cuba, and it is free, which is not nothing in a city where almost everything else is paid in hard currency.
Getting there
It runs along the whole north coast of the city. Reachable from any perpendicular street in Habana Vieja, Centro or Vedado.
Rules on site
In a northerly swell the waves clear the wall and flood the roadway: the police then close the avenue, and the parapet is untenable. Long stretches have no lighting at all.
