Castillo de Jagua

A Spanish Fortress Of The 1740s Guarding The Mouth Of Cienfuegos Bay, Built Eighty Years Before The City It Now Protects, And Reached By A Small Ferry Across The Water · Cienfuegos, Cienfuegos

The Spanish built this fort in the 1740s to stop pirates and the English getting into Cienfuegos bay, and it did its job for eighty years before there was any city here at all - Cienfuegos itself was not founded until 1819. It is a compact stone fortress on a bluff at the narrow neck of the bay, with a moat and a drawbridge, and the view from its walls down the channel is the reason it was put here. Below it, reached only on foot, is Perche, a village of Canary Islander fishermen's houses along lanes too narrow for any vehicle. And directly across the water stands the other thing nobody expects: the containment dome of the Juragua nuclear power station, a Soviet-Cuban project abandoned unfinished when the USSR collapsed in 1992, with its purpose-built town beside it. A Spanish fort against pirates, a Canary Islander fishing village and a dead Soviet reactor in a single view is not a combination anywhere else in the Caribbean offers.

Castillo de Jagua, entrance to Cienfuegos bay, Cienfuegos, Cienfuegos, Cienfuegos, Cuba

Open daytime hours with a weekly closing day and a small entrance charge. THE SMALL PASSENGER FERRY FROM CIENFUEGOS runs a few times a day across the bay and is by far the best way to arrive; it depends on fuel like everything else, so confirm before relying on it. The road route around the bay takes about an hour. Perche village below is open at all times and free.

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