Sancti Spiritus
One Of The Seven Original Villas Founded By Diego Velazquez In 1514, With The Only Surviving Stone Arched Bridge Of Its Kind In Cuba And One Of The Island'S Oldest Churches · Sancti Spiritus, Sancti Spiritus
Diego Velazquez founded seven villas in Cuba in the 1510s and this was one of them, moved to the banks of the Yayabo a few years later and quietly getting on with itself ever since. Almost nobody stops. What they drive past is the Puente Yayabo, a five-arched stone bridge finished in the 1820s and the only one of its kind left in the country, and the Iglesia Parroquial Mayor del Espiritu Santo, rebuilt in stone in the 1680s on sixteenth-century foundations and among the oldest churches on the island. Around them is a compact grid of low colonial houses in ochre and blue, a working provincial square, and the Valle-Iznaga palace full of the furniture of the sugar family who built the valley outside Trinidad. The guayabera shirt is said to have been invented on this riverbank, which the town enjoys claiming and nobody can settle. Almost nothing here is restored for visitors, and a night costs a fraction of what the same night costs seventy kilometres away in Trinidad.
Parque Serafin Sanchez, Sancti Spiritus, Sancti Spiritus, Sancti Spiritus, Cuba
The squares and the Puente Yayabo are open at all times. The Iglesia Parroquial Mayor, the Museo de Arte Colonial in the Valle-Iznaga palace and the Casa de la Guayabera keep daytime hours with a weekly closing day. Evening music at the Casa de la Trova on the main square. Daily power cuts affect everything, as across the country.