Havana (HAV)

The Havana airport is an airport built in the 1920s for wealthy Americans. This is the first hub of LACO, the forerunner of Air Cuba. In 2004, the T3 terminal was opened, followed by T4 in 2011. The airport should develop, with funding from the company, two additional tracks in 2014-2015. This will bring the number of tracks to four in total.

To access information relating to the airport here.

Havana, the City

History

The current location of Havana and its natural bay were first visited by Europeans during the circumnavigation of the island by Sebastián de Ocampo in 1509. Soon after, in 1510, the first Spanish settlers arrived from Hispaniola and began the conquest of Cuba.

The conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founded Havana on August 25, 1515 on the south coast of the island, near the present site of the city Surgidero de Batabano. Between 1514 and 1519, the city experienced at least two different positions. All attempts to found a city on the south coast have failed. The location of the town was near a port at the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico, ensuring easy access to the Gulf Stream, the main ocean current followed by browsers when traveling from America to Europe. This location led to Havana's early development as a major port in the Spanish colonies in the New World. Originally, Havana was a commercial port, the victim of regular attacks from buccaneers, pirates and privateers. The city was reduced to ashes in 1538 and 1555. The attack of 1555, which resulted in the burning of the city, was conducted by the corsair Jacques de Sores. He took Havana easily, plundered and burned. De Sores left the city without obtaining the enormous wealth he hoped to find. Such attacks convinced the Kingdom of Spain to finance the construction of the first fortresses in large cities. December 20, 1592, King Philip II of Spain bestowed the title in Havana City. Later, the city will be officially designated as "Key to the New World and Rampart of the Caribbean" by the Spanish Crown.

In the 1920s, during Prohibition in the United States, Havana became a favorite destination for wealthy Americans. Casinos and nightclubs were legion.

During the Republican period, and specifically in the 1930s, countless buildings emerged in Havana, with the appearance of lavish luxury hotels, casinos and nightclubs blazing more gleaming than each other, all controlled by Mafia of Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano with the blessing of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. The Focsa and the Habana Libre hotel are remnants from the days when Havana was the capital of mainland pleasure and idleness, attended by the great world, from Winston Churchill to Frank Sinatra.

Since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, Cuba has suffered the largest political transformation, economic and social history of Latin America. However, topographical and architectural level, little change took place except the construction of public buildings such as the imposing Ameijeiras Hospital in the city center, and hotels such as Melia Cohiba from 1990s with the revitalization of the tourism industry.