Havana was found­ed in 1519 by the Span­ish. By the 17th cen­tu­ry, it had become one of the Caribbean‘s main cen­tres for ship-build­ing. Although it is today a sprawl­ing metrop­o­lis of 2 mil­lion inhab­i­tants, its old cen­tre retains an inter­est­ing mix of Baroque and neo­clas­si­cal mon­u­ments, and a homo­ge­neous ensem­ble of pri­vate hous­es with arcades, bal­conies, wrought-iron gates and inter­nal court­yards.