| |
Sancti Spiritus
The central province of Sancti Spíritus shows the privilege of being the only of the Cuban archipelago on whose territory settles two of the first seven villages been founded at the beginning of the XVI century by the Early Spanish Diego Velázquez: that of the Sacred Spirit and that of the Holy Trinity.
Both were born in 1514, and the first one of these adopted its name, one of the 14 provinces in that it is divided political and administratively the “Republic of Cuba”. It is a region of loamy and fertile land; cover in 15% for one of the most important mountainous systems in the country, the Sierra del Escambray, and that among other attributes counts with gentle Caribbean beaches skirting the Ancón Peninsula.
Invariably seated in the riverbanks of a fluvial artery, the capital city, Sancti Spíritus, preserves in its center historical constructions that denote the diversity of styles that enriched its intricate urban lattice notably during three centuries. Their symbol is the bridge of the Yayabo that runs off on the river of the same name to whose surroundings the old city is disseminated ,and they can enjoy beautiful colonial mansions, among them The Quinta of Santa Elena. Its residents' pride is also the biggest Parroquial Church that testifies the antiquity of the village, which received for Real Order the city title in 1867. In passing for their streets, the visitor will feel a placidness air that one also breathes in museums and squares. |
|
However, it is Trinidad -with all considered fairness a city-museum - the one that conserves more complete and better colonial architectural groups of the American continent, a fact that possesses and it is recognized by the UNESCO in December of 1988, when declared it World Heritage.
A cross to the shade of a" jigüe" remembers the place where one shows off that Friar Juan de Teson officiated the first mass of the future village, in the Christmas 1513. Very near there they would build the Major Square and the Major Church of the Holy Trinity that stores among their more valuable pieces the famous Cristo de la Vera Cruz ,and a marble altar dedicated to the cult of the Virgen de las Mercedes, only of their gender in the Island.
This is a city that invites to travel their paved streets, calmed, and their numerous squares; to discover to each step histories conserved with zeal in half dozen of museums, or in wide and fresh mansions of the XVIII and XIX centuries, in which the balustrades, the rails and grills prevail admirably worked in metal and the roofs of Creole tiles, and where the same attractive atmosphere is breathed that centuries behind it took until there to eminent travelers as the German genius Alejandro de Humboldt.
Of the splendors of the peak of the sugar industry propitiated to this village in the twilights of the XVII century speaks the San Luis Valley, also called of the Sugar Cane Factories, declared by the UNESCO World Heritage and that it constitutes an important archaeological reservation.
It is affirmed that in its moment of more splendor, the area ended up being the main producer of cane of sugar from the country when dozens of millings factories that could be sighted from the high of the e Manaca-Iznaga Tower, there of 45 meters high, and whose chimes marked the beginning and the end of the works in the plantations of this gramineous candy. Today 75 ruins corresponding to factories, summer houses, large huts and other facilities related with the production of the demanded product are conserved.
A dozen of kilometers hardly separate to the historical center of Trinidad from the beaches of the Ancón Peninsula, bathed by the waters of the Caribbean Sea, and considered among the best in the south coast of the Island. Its marine funds, of sharp relief and remarkable concentrations of black coral, can be explored in more than a score of immersion points, some of these near to Blanco Key, an island to which you consent after approximately 45 minutes of sailing from the port of Casilda.
Very close also of this colonial city the solid one mountainous of the Escambray invites to the most intrepid to live days of intense activity in the Topes de Collantes National Park, located to 800 meters high on the level of the sea and where the Salto del Caburní highlights among its numerous attractiveness.
In the central part of the province, meanwhile, it is the biggest artificial lake in the country, the Zaza Dam, with a capacity of reservoir superior to the a thousand millions of cubic meters of the valuable liquid, and that it constitutes a very appropriate place for the sport fishing, especially of the trout that ends up reaching sizes that point out it among the best from their species to international level.
To the north, the Caguanes National Park, recently declared by the UNESCO like Reservation of the Biosphere, it possesses an important system of caves in which the places of archaeological interest and the flooded caves are plentiful, and it constitutes the natural dwellings of a variety of sponge of sweet water that can only be there. |
