Cuban County House, Nowadays an Innermost Hotel in Havana City

The Old Havana charms any person who is interested in innermost places. When talking about holidays, this city is something very special for the most exquisite travelers, a Cuban feast for the eyes.
It’s particular contrasts stimulate dreams and make it an obligation for tourists to capture such a beauty in a picture and, much better, in an unforgettable memory of the active rest.
That’s why it constitutes a real pleasure the necessary walk through the paved streets of the old part of the wonderful island’s capital.
So, as a part of the efforts to provide the Cuban capital city with a more and more cultural and historical tourism, comes into being the San Beltrán de Santa Cruz hotel in the old Conde de Jaruco’s house, considered today an innermost resting place.
This hotel, managed by the touristic company of the City Historian’s Office, Habaguanex S.A, which is responsible for the amusement in La Habana Vieja, could be considered as a cultural jewel; the perfect lodge.
Located in Calle San Ignacio 411, between the streets of Muralla and Sol in Old Havana - declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site in 1982 - shows now an appropriate elegance and intimacy.
This hotel is composed by 11 colonial rooms, one suite and the other 10, standard rooms. It also boasts a breakfast-room called “San Juan de Jaruco” and a snack-bar baptized as “Don Gabriel”.
According to historians, in 1732, Don Gabriel Beltrán de Santa Cruz ordered the construction of a house at the Plaza Vieja, - the Conde de Jaruco’s house - but he died at the beginning of the works.
Hes widow, Doña Antonia Aranda y Avellaneda, daughter of the major of the San Salvador de la Punta fortress, extended the project and asked the contractor to build a small imitation of it in the backyard of the main house, called since then “La Casa Chica” (1739).
During the time, several families and prominent personalities of the society of the capital city lived in the house like the Count of San Juan de Jaruco, Pedro Beltrán de Santa Cruz and the sister of the Marchioness of Cárdenas de Monte Hermoso, Josefa Catalina de Santa Cruz.
In that mansion were received and lodged the most prominent personalities that visited the city, including the Baron Alexander von Humboldt, an eminent German scientist, and three French princes: the Count of Beaujolais, the Duke of Montpensier and the Duke of Orléans, who became later the king of France, Louis Philippe.
“La Casa Chica” hasn’t suffered great transformations, preserving its old components and its colonial ambience. This great house is located near the Plaza Vieja and has opened its doors as a new charming hotel, combining antique and modern elements with an attractive design.
This hotel is part of a very delicate structure admired by hundreds of travelers from all over the world; especially Europeans that are daily accommodated in this houses of the old part of the city.