A popular street in Havana known for music and nightlife.

A glass enclosure behind the Museo de la Revolucion shelters the Granma, the yacht that transported Castro and 81 guerrillas back to Cuba from exile in Mexico in 1956. Bought from an American, the 38-ft craft designed to carry 25 (presumably unarmed) passengers nearly foundered during the weeklong crossing. It eventually ran aground at Oriente Province in eastern Cuba, but it was two days behind schedule. The saga gets worse: Castro's forces were ambushed and only 16 survived, including Fidel, Che, Raul Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos. The park around the yacht is filled with military curios: tanks, jeeps, the delivery truck used in the 1957 assault on the Palacio Presidencial, and a turbine from a U-2 spy plane allegedly downed during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. COST: $3 (for memorial and Museo de la Revolucion). Tues.-Sun. 10-5.

A run-down Havana street not without its charms.

Tour the cigar factory for a pricey $10.

Once the Finca Vigia, this ghost-white Spanish-colonial home was where Papa penned some of his greatest novels.

An enormous fortress that fires its cannon every night.

Ernest Hemingway wasn't the only celebrity to frequent Havana's premier bar-restaurant, which in the 1940s was pronounced by Esquire magazine one of the seven best bars in the world.