Pinar del Rio City

The Capital Of Cuba'S Tobacco Province, With A Cigar Factory In A Former Prison, A Guava Liqueur Made Nowhere Else, And A Mansion Covered In Concrete Sea Creatures · Pinar del Rio, Pinar del Rio

Pinar del Rio is the capital of the province that grows the best tobacco in the world and almost everybody drives straight through it on the way to Vinales, which is fair but leaves three good things behind. The Francisco Donatien cigar factory occupies a nineteenth-century building that was once a prison, and you can watch the rolling from a gallery. The Casa Garay works still makes Guayabita del Pinar, a guava liqueur produced in this province and nowhere else, in a dry version and a sweet one, and will let you taste both. And the Palacio de Guasch is a doctor's 1909 folly of mixed gothic, moorish and neoclassical parts with concrete sea creatures crawling over the facade, now the natural history museum. The streets are colonnaded and pastel and badly battered since Hurricane Ian came through in 2022, and the damage is part of what you are looking at. A night here costs a fraction of one in Vinales, half an hour up the road.

Calle Marti, Pinar del Rio, Pinar del Rio, Pinar del Rio, Cuba

The streets and the colonnades are open at all times. The Fabrica de Tabacos Francisco Donatien, the Casa Garay liqueur works, the Palacio de Guasch natural history museum and Teatro Jose Jacinto Milanes all keep daytime hours with weekly closing days and small charges. THE CIGAR FACTORY'S TOURS AND PRODUCTION HAVE BOTH BEEN INTERRUPTED since Hurricane Ian in 2022 - confirm before going.

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