However, wander into one of its many bars and you will find them much as they were in the days of Lucky Luciano gleaming wood-panelled counters and a panoramic vista of Havana Harbour. The hotel is still a shadow of its former glory – worn around the edges and its crumbling facade barely betraying its past grandeur. Following Castro’s revolution in 1959 the hotel’s casinos were closed and the hotel nationalised, cause it to be neglected and many of the rooms fall into disrepair. On the 4th September 1933, the hotel was the site of a bloody siege when members of the Cuban army that were loyal to Fulgencio Batista’s coup assaulted the hotel, causing extensive damage in what was later to be known as the Battle of the Hotel Nacional of Cuba. Most notoriously, the hotel was also the site of the famous 1946 mobster summit, as depicted by Copolla in The Godfather Part II, when Lucky Luciano and fellow hoods decided to carve up control of Cuba.Īside from mobsters and famous faces, the Nacional de Cuba seems to be a hotel in perpetual turmoil. Its guest book reads like a who’s who of famous faces Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marlon Brando and Alexander Fleming have all walked the halls here. Upon its grand opening in 1930, the Hotel Nacional epitomised the glamour of Cuba and has welcomed mobsters, actors, and some of the world’s leading politicians. No hotel in Havana has a storied history quite like Hotel Nacional de Cuba.
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