Memorial de Vilma Espín Guillois

Santiago de Cuba

LoginSave

This erstwhile home of Cuba's former 'first lady,' Vilma Espín, the wife of Raúl Castro, and instrumental force in the success of the Cuban Revolution, opened in 2010, three years after her death. This house, where she lived from 1939 to 1959, is packed with lucid snippets of her life.

The daughter of a lawyer to the Bacardí clan, Vilma was first radicalized after a meeting with Frank País in Santiago in 1956. Joining the rebels in the mountains, she went on to found the influential Federation of Cuban Women in 1960.

Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

  • Cuba, Santiago de Cuba Province, Santiago de Cuba, Lighthouse at Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca del Morro

    Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca del Morro

    4.76 MILES

    A Unesco World Heritage site since 1997, the San Pedro fort sits impregnably atop a 60m-high promontory at the entrance to Santiago harbor, 10km southwest…

  • Moncada Museum

    Moncada Museum

    0.49 MILES

    The museum inside the Cuartel Moncada is the best in town and one of the best in Cuba. Sometimes gory exhibits catalogue the details of the 1953 attack by…

  • Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Cuba; Cementerio Santa Ifigenia Shutterstock ID 727217770; your: Bridget Brown; gl: 65050; netsuite: Online Editorial; full: POI Image Update

    Cementerio Santa Ifigenia

    1.21 MILES

    Nestled peacefully on the city's western extremity, the Cementerio Santa Ifigenia is second only to Havana's Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón in its importance…

  • Cuartel Moncada

    Cuartel Moncada

    0.49 MILES

    Santiago's famous Moncada Barracks, a crenelated art deco building completed in 1938, is now synonymous with one of history's greatest failed putsches…

  • Museo de Ambiente Histórico Cubano

    Museo de Ambiente Histórico Cubano

    0.27 MILES

    The oldest house still standing in Cuba, this arresting early colonial abode dating from 1522 was the official residence of the island's first governor,…

  • Museo de la Lucha Clandestina

    Museo de la Lucha Clandestina

    0.51 MILES

    This gorgeous yellow colonial-style building houses a museum detailing the underground struggle against Batista in the 1950s. It's a fascinating, if…

  • Cafetal La Isabelica

    Cafetal La Isabelica

    13.61 MILES

    The hub of the Unesco World Heritage site bestowed in 2000 upon the First Coffee Plantations in the Southeast of Cuba is this impressive two-story stone…

View more attractions

Nearby Santiago de Cuba attractions

1. Plaza de Dolores

0.13 MILES

East of Parque Céspedes is the pleasant and shady Plaza de Dolores, a former marketplace now dominated by the 18th-century Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de…

2. Palacio Provincial

0.16 MILES

Situated opposite the Bacardí Museum, the equally Hellenic provincial government seat is another building from Cuba's 20th-century neoclassical revival…

3. Museo Municipal Emilio Bacardí Moreau

0.18 MILES

Narrow Pío Rosado links Calle Heredia to Calle Aguilera and the fabulous Grecian facade of the Bacardí Museum. Founded in 1899 by the rum-magnate war hero…

4. Museo del Carnaval

0.19 MILES

A worthwhile museum, this is a quick visit to study the history of Santiago's biggest shindig, the oldest and biggest Carnaval between Río and Mardi Gras…

5. Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Carmen

0.22 MILES

You can dig deeper into Santiago's ecclesiastical history in this tumbledown construction, a hall church dating from the 1700s that is the final resting…

7. Calle Heredia

0.23 MILES

The music never stops on Calle Heredia, Santiago's most sensuous street and also one of its oldest. Melodies waft from the paint-peeled Casa de Cultura…

8. Casa de la Cultura Miguel Matamoros

0.24 MILES

The Casa de la Cultura Miguel Matamoros, on Parque Céspedes' eastern aspect, is the former San Carlos Club, a social center for wealthy santiagüeros until…