Escuelas Nacionales de Arte de Cubanacán

The National Art Schools stand as remarkable architectural marvels, embodying the utopian optimism and revolutionary exuberance of the early years of the Cuban Revolution. Consisting of five distinct school building complexes dedicated to music, ballet, modern dance, plastic arts, and dramatic arts, these structures were designed by three visionary architects—Porro, Gottardi, and Garatti—using organic Catalan-vaulted brick and terra-cotta construction techniques. Their history is poignant and worth exploring on Wikipedia before your visit.

I was quite surprised to learn that only three members of worldheritagesite.org have visited this site, despite it being on the tentative list for over 20 years. In contrast, Old Havana has been visited by 332 members as of the writing of this review. During my visit, I explored the School of Ballet and took a brief look at the School of Music and School of Plastic Arts from the outside. I paid 10,000 pesos (equivalent to $30 USD) to a taxi driver to take me to the School of Art, wait for me there for 30-60 minutes, and then drive me to Fusterlandia. On the return trip, I paid another taxi driver 7,000 pesos to take me back to Havana from Fusterlandia.

Initially, I attempted to visit the School of Plastic Arts. The taxi driver dropped me off at the entrance gate east of the school. Unfortunately, I was unable to gain entry like Zoe did, as the individual at the gate stopped me. It may have been due to the fact that it was …

I'm biased towards great architecture (coming second after nature) and the National Schools of Art is no exception. Also, don't you just love a site that you can park right in front even in a country's capital, walk in and look around for 30-60 minutes and move on? Well then this site is for you. The guard did ask me if I study here because I walked in with my camera but he didn't really care as long as you seem nice and tell them what you are doing.

You can already see the brick domes peaking over the walls. I was hoping for something great, and while I wasn't disappointed with the marvelous designs, the bad news is that this place is pretty much on it's last leg. Built between 1961-65 and still incomplete of what it was intended to be like, it hasn't received funding to restore and maintain any of it's building in a long time. There was recently been some discussions of rescuing the schools but discussion lead to nothing because some people do not want to open the school to international students and others are afraid of privatization (this is communism after all). To sum it up, it doesn't look good.

A very enjoyable walk around campus, and if the Mexico City university is a WHS so I think this should easily get onto the list too. It does need to update it's criteria a little because it sounds more like a intangible …