• Pick up from your accommodation and visit Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, one of Santiago’s most famous landmarks. It is lined in white marble and the former leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro is buried here. Enjoy a tour of the Cemetery and watch the guard-changing ceremony at Marti’s tomb, which happens every 30 minutes. 

• Drive to visit El Morro Castle, World Heritage Site from the 1600s, which is one of the best-preserved and most complete examples of Spanish military architecture in the world.

• Depart for San Juan Hill site of the last battle of the Cuban-American-Spanish war of 1898 led by Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders.

• Visit Vista Alegre Neighborhood, an upscale suburb that was the home to the wealthy prior to the 1959 revolution, including the Bacardi and Bosch family. 

• Enjoy a panoramic tour of Revolution Square and Moncada Barracks the symbolic “trigger” of the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

• (Optional) Savour lunch at a local restaurant with traditional food in the centre of Santiago, two minutes away from the foundational square of the city. 

Walking/car tour of the historic centre:

• Visit Plaza de Marte and walk/drive downhill the Pedestrian Street Enramadas (Jose Antonio Saco), full of colours and Cubans on their daily lives. 

• Arrive at Parque Cespedes, a throbbing kaleidoscope of walking, talking, hustling, flirting, guitar-strumming humanity. Surrounded by colonial and eclectic architecture, this most ebullient of city squares is a sight to behold day or night.

• See the bronze bust of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who kick-started Cuban independence in 1868 and visit the House of Diego Velazquez, oldest and best-preserved in Cuba, the Cathedral, originally baroque and now eclectic after the ravages of pirates, hurricanes and earthquakes, the City Hall, Hotel Casagranda and others. 

• (Optional) Have a go at Mojito/Daiquiri at Casagranda roof garden, with a nice panoramic view of the old city centre and the bay of Santiago.