The museum presents the story of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and includes vivid exhibits like blood-stained and bullet-riddled uniforms.

Hemingway's 13-acre farm on a hillside overlooking Havana is preserved as a museum.

A museum dedicated to CIA-bungles in Cuba.

The house where Cuba's greatest novelist, essayist, musicologist, poet, and all-purpose literato set his most famous work, El Siglo de las Luces (The Century of the Lights), is now open as a museum, lecture hall, research facility, library, and cultural center. Alejo Carpentier (1904-80) began as a journalist and professor of music history at Havana's National Conservatory, and went on to publish La Musica en Cuba (Music in Cuba), El Arpa y la Sombra (The Harp and the Shadow), as well as musical scores, librettos, and poetry. The house itself, the Casa de la Condesa de la Reunión, was built in 1809 and renovated in 1878. Classified as Cuban baroque, the building is trimmed in pastel "Havana blue" and has a simple facade and a graceful interior patio with painted ceramic tiles. The collection of Carpentier memorabilia includes his Olympia typewriter, the text he was working on the day before he died, American scholar Sally Harvey's study entitled Carpentier's Proustian Fiction, an interesting engraving of 18th-century Havana, and various manuscripts. COST: $2. Mon.-Sat. 9-5.

Dedicated to and named for the great Cuban surrealist painter known as the Cuban Picasso, this gallery and museum is just behind the Catedral de la Habana in the elegant, 18th-century Casa del Obispo Penalver. Along with a permanent exhibit of Lam's lithographs and etchings, the center hosts temporary shows with works by contemporary Cuban and South American artists. Lam, born in 1902, studied in Spain and fought with the Republic against Franco. He later fled to France, where he was influenced by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and the poet Andre Breton, among others. He returned to Cuba to support the Revolution, and later returned to Paris, where he died in 1982. His best works hang in the Cuban collection of Havana's Museo de Bellas Artes. COST: $3. Mon.-Sat. 10-5.

It's hard to miss Havana's oldest convent (c. 1638-44), as it's painted a bright, rich yellow and occupies an entire block. It now houses the Centro Nacional de Conservación, Restauración, y Museología (National Center for Conservation, Restoration, and Museum Science) as well as the Residencia Académica (Academic Residence), where small groups and some individuals can stay. It once housed hundreds of nuns and was a refuge for young women with problems that ranged from the routine broken heart to unwanted pregnancies and dowries insufficient for marriage. The mudéjar wood-beamed ceilings and the lush courtyard are extraordinary, as is the Salón Plenario, the marble-floored hall used for seminars. The convent regularly hosts art exhibits and concerts and has a small bar and restaurant. COST: $2. Weekdays 9-5.

The Latin inscription over the main door of this church and convent dedicated to St. Francis reads: non est in toto sanctior orbe locus (there is no holier place on earth). As it's now a museum and concert hall, it may no longer be earth's holiest place, but it certainly is one of the loveliest. Built in the 16th century, in 1730 it was restored in a baroque style, resulting in a richly adorned facade with fluted conchlike tympanums over the doors and windows. Just inside the door you'll see tombs beneath a glass floor panel. (Churches were used as cemeteries until Bishop Espada founded what is now the Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón in 1868, a detail all Cubans seem to know and cherish). Note also the 19th-century grandfather clock made by Tiffany. The rooms to the right of the nave house archaeological finds and art exhibits.

The collection is housed in the splendid Centro Asturiano finished in 1928 (in answer to the Centro Gallego across the Parque Central), a building designed by Spanish architect Manuel del Busto, as dazzling as the collection it contains. Its sweeping stairway was inspired by the Paris Opera House, and its immense stained-glass window alludes to the discovery of America. The collection ranges from Roman, Greek, and Egyptian ceramics and statuary to European art from the Italian, German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, French, and British schools. In addition there are rooms devoted to the art of the United States, as well as displays of Asian, Mexican, Antillean, and South American works. Works by Joseph Turner, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Francisco José de Goya, Bartolomé Estaban Murillo, Zurbarán, Brueghel, Canaletto, Peter Paul Rubens, Velázquez, Sorolla, and Zuloaga, among others, are displayed here. COST: $5. Tues.-Sat. 10-6, Sun. 9-1.

The house containing this museum was built in 1927 and owned by José Gómez Mena, one of Cuba's wealthiest aristocrats. The collection is a staggering display of treasure and taste: antique furniture; Aubusson rugs; a Louis XVI secrétaire; Ming vases; paintings by Tocqué, Nattier, and Largillière. Don't miss the upstairs bathroom or the gardens with the giant bronze dogs guarding the door to what was called El Jardín de Noche (The Night Garden), a terrace dance floor. COST: $3. Mon.-Sat. 11-6:30.