Artisan and Creative City of the World and National Monument of Cuba, the peculiar residential fabric and its iconic cathedral make this prosperous village a cozy and discreet place, but full of panache and mystery due to its isolation between the healthy greenery of the Cuban countryside and the explayada of stone roads and roofs of Hispanic roots jealously guarded.

Founded in 1514 by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, the settlement of the Holy Trinity became a prosperous region in the southern-central part of the island between the Caribbean Sea and the Guamuhaya mountain range, based on smuggling, cattle raising, tobacco farming, the sugar industry and the slave trade. Historical reasons conditioned the economic decay of Trinidad, which preserved the town’s architectural and urban features practically intact until the very end of the 20th century. 

Trinidad has an unrepeatable natural and urban landscape with an almost unaltered architectural heritage having exceptional values, for instance: the Main Square, the Parish Church, squares (both big and small) connected by cobblestoned streets, stately houses with clay roofs typical of the infl uences from baroque, neoclassical and eclectic styles.

SIts historic centre is one of the greatest and best preserved ones in Latin America and contains an irregular and polycentric urban layout where very old buildings erected between the 17th and 19th centuries are preserved, giving the town a high degree of monumentality. Taking into account the relevance of its heritage, Trinidad’s historic centre was declared National Monument in 1978 and ten years later, it was added to the World Heritage List, through which the preservation work during several years was recognised. This declaration by UNESCO also included the Valley of the Sugar Mills, located just a few miles away from the town and constituting a cultural landscape indissolubly linked to Cuban socioeconomic history. Numerous archaeological sites, almost all of them the location of former sugar mills in the 18th and 19th centuries, and thirteen farmhouses representative of the rural architecture in 19th-century plantations are preserved in the area.

Trinidad’s urban image is complemented by the endless presence of popular art and local traditions, such as embroidery and knitting, ceramic, wooden or vegetable fibre handicrafts, plastic arts, singing, dance and theatre, which turn it into a regional reference for the preservation of its intangible heritage.