Cuba's best-preserved colonial city — 18th-century sugar money in amber, cobblestone streets unchanged since 1850, and live salsa until dawn
Trinidad is a small colonial city 300km southeast of Havana on Cuba's south coast — a UNESCO World Heritage site that is the most intact 18th–19th-century colonial town in the Caribbean. The sugar wealth of the Valley of the Sugar Mills (Valle de los Ingenios, also UNESCO) funded the magnificent mansions of Trinidad's merchant class: the Palacio Brunet, the Palacio Cantero, the Casa de los Sánchez Iznaga — all now museums, all staggering in their marble floors, wrought-iron rejas, and stuccoed salons. The cobblestone streets are not a reconstruction — they are the original limestone paving la…
Trinidad was founded in 1514 as one of the original seven villas of Cuba — the third villa established by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. It remained a minor settlement until the late 18th century, when the Valle de los Ingenios (14km north) became one of the most productive sugar regions in the world and the city's merchant class grew extraordinarily wealthy on the slave-sugar economy. The city's architectural peak is 1750–1850; the abolition of slavery in Cuba (1886) and the decline of the sugar economy froze Trinidad in time — no subsequent development money arrived to modernise or demolish wh…