Santiago de Cuba City
Santiago de Cuba city, the peculiar urban design, is the second more important city of the island of Cuba. Located in the east part it was the last of the first seven villages, founded in 1515 by the Spanish conqueror Diego Velazquez de Cuéllar.
Two characteristics of Santiago de Cuba make it unique: its friendly, hospitable people, of jovial temperament, and its rich historical and cultural heritage.
The capital city is marked by the unmistakable imprint of a bay, splendid and surrounded by mountains, overlooked by the Morro or San Pedro de la Roca castle, declared by UNESCO in 1997 as a World Heritage Site.
Similar recognition recently received also the coffee growing, agro-industrial region extending over the ruins of more than a hundred French-Haitian coffee plantations located at La Gran Piedra Mountains.
Santiago de Cuba is considered to be the most Caribbean of cities in Cuba and is the traditional site of two important popular festivities: the Carnivals and the Fiesta del Fuego, or Feast of Fire.
The territory is also known for its patriotic history: it was here that some of the most important events in Cuba’s revolutionary history took place, and it is here, at El Cobre, that shrine of the Virgin of Charity, Cuba's patron Saint, is located.
Santiago de Cuba is a tourist destination in which it's combine multiple and attractiveness values which allow the visitor to enter in contact with its people's idiosyncrasy, the culture and history of the place and, at the same time, to enjoy its well conserved nature and exotic beaches.
This city possesses a hotels' extensive range. It is stand out the hotels Casagranda, Versailles and Meliá Santiago, besides many other hotels and villages located in the surroundings of the city in places of unquestionable natural beauty as the Baconao Park and La Gran Piedra.
Santiago de Cuba has the necessary infrastructure to become a major site of tourism of events and congresses. And its mountains and maritime surroundings render it appropriate, too, for the enjoinment of nature tourism and tourism of adventure as well, for nautical activities, cruising, and health tourism.
