Arrival at "Jose Marti" International Airport in Havana City.

You are welcomed by your Cuban guide and bus driver for the entire tour.

Transfer to your Casa Particular or Quinta Avenida Hotel.

Private group check-in.

Breakfast is complimentary from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Morning: guided tour of the Museum of Fine Arts (Cuban Collection) where we see the evolution of Cuba's visual arts over the last 300 years. The collection accounts for the richness of our Spanish, French, Chinese, African cultural roots.

Afterwards visit to Callejon de Hamel. An alleyway street caught in Centro Habana neighborhood where an effort of cultural rescue and expansion led by fine artist Salvador González has been underway since 1990.

Salvador’s murals and sculptures have taken over entire buildings’ facades– shrines to Afrocuban deities. Meet with Salvador Gonzales to discuss their work and its effects on the neighborhood.

We are now "leaving" Havana and entering Fusterlandia, the studio, residence and wild kingdom of Jose Fuster, one of the most important Cuban ceramists and painters today. Lunch hosted by Jose Fuster.

Afternoon: visit the studios of important Cuban contemporary artists such as Alicia Leal and Juan Moreira, Juan Carlos Alom, Britos’ Sisters, Ernesto Benitez and others young prominent artists.

Evening: attend one of the most traditional and popular ceremonies in Cuba, Fire of the Cannon of 9 O'Clock at the Fortress of San Carlos de La Cabana. Morning: visit to the Wifredo Lam Center, a cultural institution devoted to the study, research and promotion of the contemporary visual arts in the developing countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Housed in the former 18th-century home of the Count and Countess de Peñalver, the Wifredo Lam Center is responsible for the organization of the Havana Art Biennial.

The gallery's permanent collection includes a significant number of Lam's paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures.

Visit to Taller Experimental de Gráfica (Experimental Printing Workshop), a cooperative of young Cuban artists whom can be found working on their lithographs over stone matrices in the large, airy building. The variety of colors, sizes, and content of the prints is wide, including pieces with recognizable Cuban icons, bold black and white woodcuts.

Followed by guided walking tour of UNESCO World Heritage Site, Old Havana.

Visit to the Cathedral Square, named after the masterpiece of Cuban baroque architecture: the Cathedral of Havana built by the Jesuit order.

The Cathedral's baroque facade is simultaneously intimate and imposing, and one of the two towers is visibly larger, creating a pleasing asymmetry. As with many churches in the city, the building material of Havana Cathedral includes coral, cut and hauled from the edge of the sea by slaves. Look carefully and you'll see fossils of marine flora and fauna in the stone of the cathedral.

Visit to Square of Arms, ancient military parade ground for Spanish soldiers and surrounded by impressive buildings such as:

Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, the former official residence of the governors (Captains General) of Havana, Cuba. It is home to the Museum of the City of Havana. It houses exhibitions of art and historical artefacts and many of the rooms are preserved with their original Colonial decoration.

Palacio del Segundo Cabo. The seat of the second authority of the island. Today it houses important publishing concerns.

Castillo de la Real Fuerza. The second oldest fortress built by the Spaniards in the West Indies. The castle was recently renovated and reopened in June 2008 to hold the impressive maritime museum. Well laid out exhibits chart Spain and Cuba's naval history.

Welcome Lunch: a new wave of paladares (privately-owned restaurants) has recently swept the Cuban dining scene offering excellent food and charming ambient. Today we’ll enjoy a welcome lunch at the stylish Paladar San Cristobal, one of Havana's top ten private restaurants.

Visit to Plaza Vieja, the only civic square of colonial times. Notice it doesn't have a church or government building around. Here we will visit important institutions for visual arts.

Continue walking tour onto San Francisco Square, named after the Convent of San Francisco, this square was conceived in 1628, with the objective of supplying water to the ships trading with the metropolis. For many years it also served to stockpile the goods arriving from the harbor.

Chronicles of the time say that the square had a busy commercial life. The people, in humble carts or afoot, sold and bought a variety of goods. It’s important to know that through this place the Spanish immigrants arrived to Cuba.

Free time in the famous handicraft market of Old Havana, located inside the Almacenes de Depósito San José, an old warehouse on the harbourside where you can purchase all sorts of crafts and souvenirs by local artisans.

Return to your private rental accomodation.

Evening: tonight we have a Cuban band playing for us! We learn how to play and dance to Salsa, Son, Rumba, and other popular Cuban rhythms. Morning: guided tour of Cuba's National Art Schools. ISA professors are all active visual artists, art curators or art critics. The faculty of visual arts provides a combination of theory and practice designed for students serious about pursuing artistic achievement through concentrated study.

Study at the Institute is comparable to conservatory work in the United States. This is a great opportunity to exchange with the new generation of Cuban visual artists. Meet with students and professors.

A new wave of paladares (private family-run restaurants) has recently swept the Cuban dining scene offering excellent food and charming ambient. Today we’ll enjoy lunch at the stylish Paladar Cafe Laurent at the penthouse terrace of a small 1950s apartment building.

Afternoon: visit to Habana Art Gallery, specializing in contemporary Cuban art, it is one of Havana's oldest and best-established galleries; in the last few years, it has extensively promoted the latest trends in today's visual arts.

Visit current exhibit and meet with Cuban artists and curators.

Followed by visit to the studios of important Cuban contemporary artists such as Rene Pena, Lazaro Saavedra and Jose Angel Toirac.

Evening: enjoy Afrojazz, Cubajazz and Sonjazz at Club La Zorra y El Cuervo, Havana’s most famous Jazz club, located just around the corner from the National Hotel of Cuba. The club features astonishing performances by island bands and soloists! (optional, not included). Day tour to Vinales Valley, containing the most spectacular scenery in Cuba and some of the most interesting and varied geological formations on the island. The valley is particularly famous for its great freestanding rock formations called mogotes.

Visit local tobacco growing farms and meet with local farmers that have been passing from generation to generation the secrets of growing the best tobacco in the world.

Visit to Mural de la Prehistoria, a huge painting on the side of a Mogote.

Lunch at Paladar Casa del Campesino.

After lunch we will visit the Cueva del Indio, used by the Guanahatabey Amerindians as a burial site in ancient time, and as refuge from the Spaniards for both Indians and Black slaves alike. We’ll take a short boat ride on the subterranean river running through the cave.

Explore Viñales town at your leisure: its open-air craft market, Parque Marti, town church, and other interesting sites of this charming colonial hamlet.

Visit the Viñales Botanical Garden.

Return to Havana City. Morning: visit to Finca Vigia, a hilltop villa 20 kilometers east of Havana, where famed author Ernest Hemingway lived from 1939 to 1960. It is here where the writer completed some of his greatest works, including The Old Man and the Sea, Across the River and into the Trees, and Islands in the Stream.

The villa has been maintained as a museum for the past 49 years. It contains original book and short story manuscripts, letters, over 3000 photographs, Hemingway’s fishing tackle and gun collections, furniture, priceless art collection, and a 9000 volume library that contains rare first editions of his books and those of other famous writers.

Finca Vigía has made both the World Monuments Fund List of 100 Most Endangered sites, and The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered Places.

Lunch in Cojimar fishing village.

Tour around Cojimar fishing village, where Hemingway kept his boat Pilar. The writer is remembered by the town with a small gazebo that encircles a commemorative bust, sculpted from the melted down propellers donated by local fishermen.

Afternoon: visit to several Cuban Art Galleries such as:

Visit to the Center for the Development of Visual Arts, an art institution that promotes and exhibits the work of Cuban contemporary artists. Visit current exhibit and meet with artists and curators.

Visit to Fototeca de Cuba, an art institution created in 1986 to preserve, study and promote the country’s photographic patrimony and open a space for the promotion of international photography. The Fototeca is an archive with a vast and valuable collection of documents; it is also a museum with the widest and most valuable collection of Cuban photography known and it functions as a gallery with rooms for temporary exhibitions in which works that do not belong to the permanent collection are generally exhibited.

Visit to La Casona Gallery that focuses its activities on the latest movements within contemporary Cuban art, promoting and marketing the new conceptual projects that use different artistic languages, such as photography, installation, video, painting and sculpture.

Return to your private rental accomodation.

Evening: enjoy performance of the National Ballet of Cuba at the Great Theatre of Havana (optional) (TBC). Free day to revisit your favourite art galleries, exhibits and studios.

Farewell dinner at Paladar La Guarida. Early morning departure to Havana City International Airport for departure.