Guide to Old Havana (Habana Vieja) and its Fortification System

Havana’s streetlights have been going out for up to 20 hours a day in parts of the country since 2024, and the grid collapsed entirely on more than one occasion in 2025 and 2026. That’s not a footnote for a modern travel guide to this city, it’s essential context: Old Havana today is a UNESCO World Heritage Site being lived in and run through a genuine national energy crisis, and understanding that changes how you plan a visit, from what you pack to what you should expect from restaurants and transport once you’re there.

Getting the fortress names straight

Most casual write-ups of this site scramble the names and dates of Havana’s four principal fortifications, so here is the accurate lineup. Castillo de la Real Fuerza sits on the west side of the harbor entrance and is the oldest of the group, begun in 1558 and finished in 1577, making it one of the oldest surviving stone forts in the Americas. Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta, built starting in 1587 on the western side of the bay mouth, worked as a paired defense with the fort across the channel, the two forts able to stretch a chain between them at night to physically block ships from entering the harbor. Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, universally known as El Morro, guards the eastern side of the bay entrance and dates from the same late-16th-century push to fortify the harbor after repeated pirate raids exposed how vulnerable the city was. Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, commonly called La Cabaña, is the newcomer of the group, built between 1772 and 1774 in direct response to the British capture of Havana during the Seven Years’ War, a humiliating occupation that made clear the older forts alone weren’t enough. Together, the four fortifications and the historic center were inscribed as one UNESCO site in 1982.

What each fort is actually like to visit

El Morro remains the most photographed of the four, and deservedly so, its lighthouse and thick stone ramparts framing the harbor entrance in a way that has become the visual shorthand for Havana itself. La Cabaña, the largest of the fortifications by footprint, hosts the nightly cañonazo ceremony, a re-creation of the historic 9pm cannon firing that once signaled the closing of the city gates and the raising of the harbor chain, performed by costumed reenactors and genuinely worth timing your evening around. La Real Fuerza today houses a maritime museum inside its old walls, a fitting use given it was built specifically to protect the Spanish treasure fleet’s home port. La Punta is the least visited of the four and often gets skipped entirely, but its position directly across the narrow channel from El Morro makes it worth a quick stop if you want to understand how the twin-fort chain defense actually worked geometrically, something that’s much harder to picture from inside just one fort.

The city beyond the walls

Plaza de Armas, the oldest square in Havana and the original seat of Spanish colonial government, anchors the historic core and is ringed by colonial-era buildings including what is now the Museum of the Revolution. Plaza Vieja underwent a genuinely careful restoration through the 1990s and 2000s and now mixes Baroque facades with restaurants and bars around a square that had spent much of the 20th century as a parking lot before restoration crews brought it back. The Convent of San Francisco de Asís, founded in the late 16th century, holds an art collection worth a slower look than most visitors give it, tucked as it is behind a plain baroque facade that undersells what’s inside.

What the energy crisis actually means for a visit

Expect blackouts, some scheduled and some not, and plan around them rather than being surprised by them. Restaurants and casas particulares that cater to tourists generally run on generators or have adapted with battery lighting, but public infrastructure, streetlighting, traffic signals, and public transport have all been affected, and trash collection has slowed in parts of the city due to fuel shortages for collection trucks. International tourist arrivals have dropped sharply as flight cancellations from major source markets have piled onto the general uncertainty, which paradoxically means smaller crowds at the major sites right now than in pre-crisis years. Bring a headlamp or phone flashlight as a genuine packing essential, not just a nice-to-have, and confirm with your accommodation directly whether they have reliable backup power before you book, since availability varies significantly even within the same neighborhood.

Practical notes

Carry cash in a mix of currencies since card payment infrastructure is unreliable even without the power situation factored in, and confirm with your accommodation what currency they actually want before you arrive. The historic core is compact and walkable, so a car is unnecessary once you’re inside Habana Vieja itself; save transport concerns for getting to and from the airport. My honest take: go for the fortification system specifically, since it’s one of the most complete surviving examples of Spanish colonial military engineering anywhere in the hemisphere, but go with patience built into your itinerary rather than a tightly scheduled day-by-day plan, because right now Havana simply cannot guarantee the predictability a normal city trip assumes.