Almacenes San Jose Craft Market

Cuba'S Largest Handicraft Market, Several Hundred Stalls Under The Roof Of A Nineteenth Century Harbour Warehouse In Old Havana · Havana, La Habana

A nineteenth-century warehouse on the Havana waterfront has been filled with several hundred stalls, and this is where most visitors to Cuba end up buying whatever they take home. A great deal of it repeats: Che portraits by the hundred, canvases of vintage cars on the Malecon, maracas, wooden humidors, leather bags and embroidered linen, stall after stall of nearly the same thing. Knowing that before you walk in is what makes the rest findable, because among the repetition are painters selling genuinely good work cheaply, decent leather, old Cuban banknotes and coins, and craftsmen who made what is in front of them. Haggling is expected and the opening price is not the price. Nothing takes cards. And the cigars sold to you on the street outside are fake, without exception, however good the box and the story. What is worth buying is inside: unframed canvases from the people who painted them, leather, and old pre-revolutionary banknotes. It is also under cover, which makes it the right thing to do in rain.

Avenida del Puerto esquina Cuba, Old Havana, Havana, La Habana, Cuba

Open daytime hours most days of the week, generally from mid-morning until early evening, with a weekly closing day. CASH ONLY throughout. Bags are checked at the door. It occupies a converted warehouse on Avenida del Puerto in Old Havana, walkable from Plaza Vieja, and the harbour ferry to Casablanca and Regla leaves from close by.

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