One of the most rec­og­niz­able sym­bols of the Cuban cap­i­tal. Erect­ed in the 1920s in the wake of the con­struc­tion of mon­u­men­tal gov­ern­ment build­ings — ana­logues of the Capi­tol in Wash­ing­ton — the Capi­tol in Havana was even one meter taller than the Amer­i­can one, which gave the rul­ing Ger­ar­do Macha­do an addi­tion­al rea­son to declare the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the island state over West­ern impe­ri­al­ists.

Con­struc­tion of the future build­ing of the Nation­al Assem­bly start­ed in 1926 under the lead­er­ship of the famous Cuban archi­tect E.R. Piedra. The grandiose facil­i­ty was put into oper­a­tion less than three years lat­er — in May 1929, on the day of cel­e­brat­ing inde­pen­dence from Spain. The par­lia­ment of the repub­lic met with­in the walls of the Capi­tol for about 30 years — in 1959, after the vic­to­ry of the leader of the social rev­o­lu­tion F. Cas­tro, the build­ing became a con­fer­ence cen­ter. Today, the Min­istry of Sci­ence, the His­to­ry Muse­um and the library are locat­ed with­in its walls.

The author of the Capi­tol did not set him­self the task of copy­ing the Amer­i­can project: the archi­tec­ture of the build­ing bears fea­tures char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Ital­ian Renais­sance, and is rem­i­nis­cent of St. Peter’s Tem­ple in the Vat­i­can and the Paris Pan­theon. In addi­tion, the Havana Capi­tol sur­pass­es the Amer­i­can one in height, and in gen­er­al the 92-meter dome of the build­ing is the third tallest in the world among build­ings with sim­i­lar archi­tec­ture.

The Capi­tol in Havana amazes with its splen­dor. The first thing that opens before the visitor’s eyes is mas­sive bronze doors, dec­o­rat­ed with bas-reliefs depict­ing scenes of nation­al his­to­ry — from the moment of the land­ing of H. Colum­bus until the peri­od of con­struc­tion of the build­ing. In the main hall there is an 11-meter gild­ed sculp­ture of a woman hold­ing a pike and a shield. The stat­ue is a kind of sym­bol of the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion.

The Capi­tol con­sists of six halls, the last of which allows you to get close to the famous gild­ed dome. Here every­one can appre­ci­ate the crafts­man­ship of the design. The dome is crowned with an exact copy of a bronze stat­ue of Mer­cury (16th cen­tu­ry) from the Bargel­lo Palace in Flo­rence. The inte­ri­ors of oth­er halls and offices are also amaz­ing. The library is remark­able. The book depos­i­to­ry room is dec­o­rat­ed with noble mahogany and fan­cy lamps made by Cuban design­ers.

On the sides of the cen­tral struc­ture there are two semi­cir­cu­lar build­ings. For three decades, the Repub­li­can Coun­cil and the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cham­ber met in them. Both build­ings are styl­ized with 10 artis­ti­cal­ly dec­o­rat­ed columns, each of which has a sacred mean­ing.

One of the main attrac­tions of the Capi­tol is a copy of a 25-carat dia­mond that belonged to the last Russ­ian Emper­or Nicholas II. The his­tor­i­cal jew­el came to Lib­er­ty Island thanks to a Turk­ish jew­el­er, who in turn pur­chased the stone in France. One day the dia­mond was stolen, but lat­er it was returned to its place and replaced with an exact copy.