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Ernest Hemingway's real former home in the San Francisco de Paula suburb of Havana, where he lived for roughly two decades and wrote parts of 'The Old Man and the Sea' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Now preserved as the Museo Hemingway, the house is kept largely as Hemingway left it, with his boat, the Pilar, on display in the grounds.
Visitor guide
Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, is the house where the American writer Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba for about two decades. It stands in the San Francisco de Paula ward of Havana, roughly 13 kilometres southeast of the city centre, and is now preserved as a museum.
The name comes from a Spanish Army surveillance barracks that once stood on the site. According to Wikipedia, the Catalan architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer built the house in 1886, and its back veranda and adjacent tower overlook downtown Havana. Hemingway rented it from mid-1939 and bought it in December 1940 for 12,500 dollars, after marrying Martha Gellhorn, using early royalties from For Whom the Bell Tolls. The property then covered about 15 acres.
After his divorce in 1945 he kept the house and lived there in winters with his last wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway.
The style is late nineteenth-century Cuban residential with Spanish colonial influences, and the house has a large central lounge with a terrace, a watchtower, masonry walls and tile roofs. Spanish Wikipedia says Martha Gellhorn found the property in a Havana newspaper advertisement in 1939 and persuaded Hemingway to leave the Hotel Ambos Mundos.
Hemingway wrote much of For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea there. The latter, published in 1951, draws on the fishing town of Cojimar. A workshop tower built for him in 1946 was later given over to cats, since he preferred writing in his bedroom. He began keeping cats there, starting with an Angora named Princessa, and by 1943 the population reached eleven.
The grounds once included a tennis court and a pool, and Hemingway used the gardens and orchards to grow fruit and vegetables. His 38-foot fishing boat Pilar is part of the collection associated with the house.
The library holds more than 9,000 volumes, including first editions, and the collection includes maps, manuscripts and personal objects such as a typewriter, according to the Spanish article. The first cats were named Princessa, Good Will and Boise, and Mary Welsh Hemingway later expanded the property, including space for the cats.
Hemingway left Cuba for good on 25 July 1960, and the Cuban government expropriated the property that autumn. Official Cuban accounts say Mary Hemingway deeded the house to the state, while her own account says the government announced it would expropriate the house and she negotiated only for some movable items and manuscripts. The government restored the house and reopened it to visitors in 2007.
The US National Trust for Historic Preservation and the World Monuments Fund have listed the site as endangered, while some researchers report that the government has maintained the house, its contents and the Pilar.
Visitor arrangements at the house are set by the museum and have varied over the years, so check them locally. A private guided visit combines Finca Vigia with the fishing town of Cojimar and other Hemingway-related sites. Guides can explain the Hemingway story and its place in Cuban memory.
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