Havana Culture

The city is home to several international cultural events such as the Ballet Festival of Havana, Film Festival of Havana, Plaza Jazz Festival and The International Guitar Festival Leo Brouwer. Home Town modernist poet and writer Jose Marti, is known as the Key to the New World and bulwark of the West Indies for its strategic location and plays one of the major cities of Latin America for events located in the area of the Gulf of Mexico.

The city also houses the Casa de las Americas, an institution responsible for promoting art and literature, from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, which annually sponsors a literary contest known as Casa de las Americas or simply Casa Prize, and the jury consists of distinguished personalities such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas LLosa.

Havana also has a great variety of nightclubs and discos, cabarets and theatres where Havana residents and tourists both domestic and foreign spend colourful nights in the city. There is still the title of the Spanish crown concerning this city, notably the Marquis de la Habana, dating from colonial times.

The city also hosts the annual International Book Fair of Havana, which has spread to other provinces of the country. The main venue of the event is the Morro-Cabana fortress, east of the city, and has regional offices in all the libraries of the capital.