Gran Teatro de La Habana

Stand under the arcade for a moment and listen. Old American cars rumble past on the Paseo del Prado, horns sound across Parque Central, and somewhere a trumpet rises from a café terrace. Above you, the stone is cool and pale and heavily carved. Look up, and the building seems to climb in tiers: balconies, columns, arched windows, and finally four corner towers with winged figures against the Caribbean sky. This is the Gran Teatro de La Habana, a palace built for music and for a community far from home.

The story begins not with Cubans, but with Spaniards from Galicia, the rainy green corner of northwest Spain. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, huge numbers of Galicians crossed the Atlantic to Cuba. They worked as shopkeepers, dockworkers, clerks and cooks. In Havana, so many arrived that Cubans began calling almost any Spaniard a 'gallego'. These immigrants built a powerful mutual aid society, the Centro Gallego. It offered members health care, schooling, dances and a place to speak their own language.

By the early twentieth century, the Centro Gallego was rich enough to want a headquarters that matched its ambition. The society bought a plot beside an older, much-loved theatre. A Belgian architect, Paul Belau, designed the new building in an exuberant neo-Baroque style. Neo-Baroque means a revival of the dramatic, curving, heavily decorated architecture of seventeenth-century Europe. The result opened in the mid-1910s, and it became the social club's palace. Its theatre also became one of the grandest stages in the Americas.

Here is the first surprise. The building you see did not replace the old theatre — it wrapped around it. Inside these walls sits the site of the Teatro Tacón, which opened in 1838. In its day, travellers called the Tacón one of the finest theatres in the world. It was named after Miguel Tacón, a hard-line Spanish governor of the island. So when you buy a ticket here, you sit in a place where Havana has gathered for performances for nearly two centuries.

Now look closely at the sculpture groups on the façade. They are the work of the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti. The marble figures stand for ideas the Centro Gallego valued: charity, education, music and theatre. Notice how the figures lean outward from the stone, as if stepping off the building. Up on the four towers, winged angels hold their poses above the traffic. From the park opposite, they frame the whole façade like the corners of a picture.

The façade is not one flat wall. It moves in and out. Columns cluster in pairs, balconies swell over the street, and the corner towers push the eye upward. Wrought iron railings add thin black lines against the pale stone. At ground level, a shaded arcade runs along the front. It protects people from midday sun and sudden tropical rain. This was practical Havana design long before air conditioning, and the shade still feels welcome today.

The second surprise is about the sound of this place. In 1920, the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso sang in Havana, at the theatre then known as the Teatro Nacional. Opera stars of that era travelled by ship between New York, Havana and South America. For the Cuban elite, these nights were huge social events. People dressed carefully, arrived by carriage or car, and watched each other as closely as they watched the stage.

After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the old immigrant societies lost their place in public life. The building became a state cultural institution. Over time, it found its strongest identity through dance. Today it is the home of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the national ballet company. That company grew around one extraordinary woman: Alicia Alonso, a Havana-born dancer who became one of the most celebrated ballerinas of the twentieth century.

Alonso danced on the great stages of New York and Europe. She also continued dancing for many years while her eyesight was failing badly. Her partners learned to guide her with precise positions and signals, so she always knew where she was on stage. She and her colleagues built a Cuban school of ballet, known for strong technique and warm, open expression. In 2015, the theatre was renamed in her honour: the Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso.

Around the same time, the building went through a long restoration. Workers cleaned and repaired the stone, the towers and the sculpture. Inside, halls were refreshed for performances once again. The main auditorium carries the name of Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet and playwright who visited Cuba and loved Havana. There are smaller halls too, for chamber concerts, rehearsals and more intimate shows. If a guided tour is running, the staircases and foyers are worth the extra time.

The theatre is also the heart of the Havana International Ballet Festival. During the festival, dancers and companies from many countries come to perform. On those nights, the steps fill with people, and the arcade carries the sound of many languages. Even on a quiet day, you might see young dancers with hair pulled tight and bags over their shoulders. Ballet in Cuba is not only for an elite. Many families follow it closely and know the names of the leading dancers.

Step back across the road into Parque Central to see the building in its setting. To one side rises the white dome of the Capitolio, the old parliament building. Nearby stands the Hotel Inglaterra, with its tiled front and busy terrace. The Paseo del Prado runs north toward the sea, lined with trees and benches. Together, these buildings show the confidence of Havana in the early twentieth century, when sugar money flowed and the city wanted to look like Paris or Madrid.

Before you move on, look up one last time. Watch how the light changes on the carved stone as clouds pass over. The angels on the towers have watched this square for more than a century: horse carriages, then streetcars, then the cars that still rattle by today. Listen again to the traffic, the music from the cafés, the voices in the park. Then walk slowly along the arcade, and touch the cool stone as you pass.