With more than 500 years of history, La Trinidad, (The Trinity) as it was said, was recognized by Diego Velázquez as the third of the villas on the island of Cuba.
Privileged by history since its very emergence, Trinidad was the starting point and mobilization of Hernán Cortés for the conquest of Mexico and seat of the encomendero Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, the defender Father of the Indians.
It is also one of the best-preserved cities in the country and a stroll through its cobbled streets, with beautiful squares and spacious mansions, full of light and color, with reddish clay roofs, can turn out to be a trip through time.
The architectural styles that predominate are typical of the Canary Islands and Andalusia and for Trinidad, five centuries of history do not mean decrepitude, on the contrary, it is a city that stands erect with the pride of its past, the splendor of its beauty and the humility of its virtues, looking to the future and open to the world.
Located in the south center of the country, in the province of Sancti Spíritus, Trinidad is also known as the City Museum of the Caribbean.
Caressed by the warm waters of the sea, the town grew guarded by the mountain mass of Guamuhaya and in the vicinity of the Valle de los Ingenios (Valley of the Sugar Mills), a factory complex that gave it its maximum splendor in the nineteenth century.
Moreover, today, this legendary city, receives visitors with gastronomic, cultural and recreational offers, which go through the preparation of the Canchánchara, a typical drink of the mambises during the independence upraising in the nineteenth century and which is made with brandy and honey.
There are its weavers and embroiderers, the potters, able to make works of art with their hands and keep alive traditions of unparalleled charms.
Precisely Trinidad aspires to receive the status of Handicraft City of the World, by the seal of exclusivity that has its artisan manifestations, secrets that transmit from parents to children to keep alive a tradition inherited from the sixteenth century.
Another of the Trinitarian exclusivities is the Romantic Museum, the only one of its kind in Cuba, which stands majestically in what used to be the palace of one of the richest families of the time, the Counts of Casa Brunet.
"Booking an excursion to Trinidad means going deep into the Cuban identity, living with its rich past, and also with its dynamic present. Trinidad, besides being a destination with an impressive historical richness and culture, is an energetic, vital destination, a region where culture is still alive and active."
It is one of the most visited architectural gems of our country, distinguished in its time as the most beautiful palace in Cuba, its construction began in 1808 and has become in time, the guardian of relics of the culture of that refined sugar aristocracy, with all the signs of splendor that surrounded that elite of the colonial era.
The Valle de los Ingenios is another of the charms of Trinidad, located a few kilometers from the center of the town, in one of the largest sugar regions in all of Cuba.
Many Trinitarian landowners who were engaged in producing sugar and they did it with slave labor, which was the source of so much splendor.
Idyllic for its beauty, the system of sugar plantation in this paradisiacal Trinitarian region left in cultural heritage the balance of 73 industrial archaeological sites with constructive remains of vernacular architecture adapted to the functions and requirements of the then sugar production: boiler house, purging, still, warehouse, towers and wells, dams and reservoirs, homes for masters and servants, nursing and cemeteries, among many others that remain silent witnesses of how sugar was produced in Cuba during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The tower of the old sugar mill San Alejo de Manaca, built in the 20s of the 19th century, is another of the great charms of that place; it is 43.5 meters high and has been selected, spontaneously, by generations of Trinitarians, as one of its most endearing symbols of that heritage city.
It is a monumental complex in a natural setting, with an area of 253 km², and high landscape values, which are testimonies of a way of life and production of the sugar history of a privileged region, where men of different ethnicities converged and cultures that came together in a long and decadent process that culminated, first in the Creole and later, definitely in the Cuban.
The historian Aurelio Gutiérrez González, in his book Trinidad, says "today the Valley of the Sugar Mills can be considered as an eco-cultural system where monuments, nature and society interact, which is why it is an objective of high tourist value".
The Ancon Beach, with calm and warm waters, is another of its natural charms, with its permanent invitation to practice water sports, for which it has 30 special points for diving.
To all its stories and legends, the natural beauty of Trinidad is dedicated to its tunes by popular singers, men and women who play guitar, walk the streets of this town, declared since 1988 by UNESCO as World Cultural Heritage, together to his Valley of the Sugar Mills.
To travel through Trinidad is to delve into the foundational history of Cuba, a country that from its origins as a Spanish colony in the Americas had an inexhaustible source of wealth in sugar, but it also had, the most painful human miseries, those that bring with it the slavery of other men.
To visit Trinidad is to see with our own eyes an architectural and architectural jewel of yesteryear, a city that, while still modern, is simply fascinating.