The Spanish word vedado means "closed off" or "forbidden", and that's what this forested swath of territory mostly was during the colonial period, when it was a military buffer zone. After Cuban independence from Spain in 1898, wealthy Cubans started building manses and villas here large and small, and many of these early-20th-century, mostly neoclassical Republican gems such as the one above still line the leafy streets here, joined as the century wore on by more modern additions up till the time of the 1959 Revolution.

Some of the blocks of El Vedado alongside and close to the sea also became the site of a number of grand hotels, resorts, and casinos - such as the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the Havana Hilton (since the early 1960s rebranded as the Habana Libre), the Capri, and the Riviera - which were the glamourous focal point of the increasingly booming tourist trade from the United States in the 1930s through 1950s (many patronised by Hollywood A-listers and international political heavyweights, and not a few also notoriously entwined with the American Mafia, especially the Riviera, owned by gangster Mayer Lansky).

Read more in our post Havana´s Gracious Vedado District.

Satika