Finca Vigia
Ernest Hemingway'S Cuban Home From 1939 To 1960, Kept As He Left It And Open As A Museum; Visitors View The Interior Through Open Windows And Doors Rather Than Entering · Havana, La Habana
Hemingway bought this house on a hill above San Francisco de Paula in 1940, having rented it the year before, and lived in it for twenty years - longer than he lived anywhere else. He wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea here. When he left Cuba in 1960 the house was kept as it stood, and what makes it remarkable is how completely: nine thousand books still on the shelves, his glasses and his typewriter on a bookcase because he wrote standing up, hunting trophies on the walls, magazines from 1960, the dead man's bar still stocked. You do not go inside - the interior is viewed through the open windows and doors all round the house, which works better than it sounds and is why the museum closes when it rains. In the garden are the pool where Ava Gardner is said to have swum, the graves of four of his dogs, and the Pilar itself under a pavilion, hauled up out of the sea and set down among the palms.
Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, San Miguel del Padron, La Habana, Havana, La Habana, Cuba
Open most days with a weekly closing day, keeping daytime hours. THE HOUSE CLOSES IN RAIN, because the interior is viewed through open windows and doors and they have to be shut - which in the wet season can mean a wasted journey. The grounds, the Pilar and the pool stay open. Fifteen kilometres from central Havana; taxis wait.