🇨🇺 Cuba · Central Cuba
Santa Clara is the city of the Revolution par excellence. In the geographical center of Cuba, this university city with a youthful spirit carries in its identity one of the most decisive episodes in the country's history: the Battle of Santa Clara, in December 1958, when the rebel forces commanded by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara derailed an armored train and took the city, delivering the final blow that precipitated the fall of the Batista regime a few days later. So visiting Santa Clara is, to a large extent, looking into the Cuban revolutionary epic.
Here is the place where Che's remains rest: the imposing Commander Ernesto Che Guevara Sculptural Complex, with its great statue, its mausoleum and its museum, one of the most visited and symbolic sites in Cuba. And here too is the Armored Train Monument, which preserves the derailed carriages from that battle. But Santa Clara is not only history: it's a city with a Parque Vidal full of life, a young, university population, a restless cultural scene and one of the freest and most diverse nightlife scenes in Cuba.
This guide covers Santa Clara with a practical eye: the great monuments to Che and to the battle, the lively center around Parque Vidal, its cultural atmosphere and its role as a base for excursions to charming Remedios and the northern cays. It's an essential stop for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Cuba, and a surprisingly vital and open city.
Santa Clara was founded in 1689 by families from the town of San Juan de los Remedios, who were seeking a safer place inland, away from the pirate attacks suffered on the coast. The new settlement, located in the center of the island, grew slowly as an agricultural and commercial center, and over time became an important communications hub thanks to its central position and, later, to the railway. During the 19th-century wars of independence, the region was the scene of battles. But the episode that marked the history of Santa Clara forever happened in December 1958: the Battle of Santa Clara, in which the rebel forces led by Che Guevara, after derailing an armored train loaded with government weapons and troops, took the city. The fall of Santa Clara, a strategic point in the center of Cuba, precipitated the flight of dictator Fulgencio Batista and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Decades later, in 1997, the remains of Che Guevara —located in Bolivia, where he had been executed in 1967— were moved to Santa Clara and laid in a mausoleum within the great Sculptural Complex built in his honor. Today the city is a symbol of the Revolution and a university and cultural center of central Cuba. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of Che and of the decisive battle of the Revolution: land of Santa Clara —the city of Marta Abreu and of the Heroic Guerrilla—, of the colonial town of Remedios and its World Heritage Parrandas, and of the white-sand cays of the north coast such as Cayo Santa María.
Read the history of Villa Clara →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The origin of Santa Clara is tied, paradoxically, to the insecurity of the coast. At the end of the 17th century, the inhabitants of the town of San Juan de los Remedios, on the north coast, suffered constant attacks from pirates and corsairs who ravaged the Cuban shoreline. Tired of that threat and of internal disputes, several families decided to move inland, to a safer, more protected place in the center of the island.
So, in 1689, those families founded a new settlement that in time would be called Santa Clara (Villa de Santa Clara). Tradition tells that the new town was established next to a tree —a tamarind, according to the account— where the first mass was celebrated, and around which the settlement grew. The choice of an inland site, far from the sea, responded precisely to the search for safety from the attacks that had punished Remedios so badly.
Set in the geographical center of Cuba, Santa Clara grew slowly as the agricultural and commercial center of a fertile region. Its central position, which would later prove strategic, was from the start one of its hallmarks. The city developed around its squares and churches, at the unhurried pace of an inland town, far from the bustle of the ports.
During the 19th century, Santa Clara grew and consolidated itself as one of the most important cities in central Cuba. Its central position made it a key communications hub, especially with the arrival of the railway, which connected it with the rest of the island. The region's economy, based on agriculture (sugarcane, tobacco, cattle) and trade, sustained the development of the city and of a well-off society.
A prominent figure of this era was Marta Abreu (1845-1909), a wealthy woman from Santa Clara known as 'the Benefactress' for her intense philanthropic activity. Marta Abreu funded numerous works for the city and the poorest: the beautiful Teatro La Caridad (opened in 1885, with the idea that its profits would go to charity), schools, public laundries, a power plant and other improvements. She also supported the independence cause. Her memory remains very present in Santa Clara, whose university bears her name.
Like the rest of Cuba, the Santa Clara region lived intensely through the wars of independence against Spain in the second half of the 19th century. The center of the island was the scene of battles and of the passage of the mambí troops during the 'invasion of the West'. Colonel Leoncio Vidal, who gives his name to the city's central park, fell in one of those battles. With the end of Spanish rule in 1898, Santa Clara joined the emerging Republic as the capital of the old province of Las Villas.
The episode that marked the history of Santa Clara —and of Cuba— forever happened at the end of December 1958, in the last days of the struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The city, for its central position and its importance as a communications hub, was a key strategic objective: whoever controlled Santa Clara cut the island in two. Toward it advanced a column of the Rebel Army commanded by Commander Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.
Batista's government sent an armored train loaded with weapons, ammunition and soldiers to reinforce the city's defense. In one of the most famous actions of the Revolution, Che's forces, with the help of a bulldozer that lifted the rails and of explosives, managed to derail the armored train and force the surrender of its occupants. The capture of the train, together with the fighting in the city —at points such as Loma del Capiro and the center—, decided the Battle of Santa Clara in favor of the rebels.
The fall of Santa Clara, announced on December 31, 1958, was the definitive blow: that same night, the dictator Batista fled Cuba, and on January 1, 1959 the Cuban Revolution triumphed. That's why Santa Clara is remembered as the city where the revolutionary victory was sealed, and Che's figure remained forever associated with it. The former Santa Clara Libre hotel, on Parque Vidal, still bears on its façade the marks of the impacts from those battles.
After the triumph of the Revolution, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara held important posts in the new Cuban government, but his vocation as an international revolutionary led him to leave Cuba to promote armed struggle in other countries. In 1966-1967 he led a guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, where he was captured by the Bolivian army (with CIA support) and executed on October 9, 1967. His body was hidden, and for decades the exact place of his burial was unknown.
In 1997, thirty years after his death, a team of forensic anthropologists managed to locate and identify in Bolivia the remains of Che and several of his fellow guerrillas. Those remains were repatriated to Cuba and taken to Santa Clara, the city of his great military victory, where they were laid in a mausoleum built especially for the purpose, within the great Sculptural Complex that had already been dedicated to him.
The Commander Ernesto Che Guevara Sculptural Complex, with its imposing bronze statue, its mausoleum and its museum, thus became the main place of Che's memory in the world and one of the most visited sites in Cuba. The choice of Santa Clara as his resting place definitively sealed the bond between the city and the commander's figure, turning it into a place of pilgrimage for admirers from all over the planet.
Beyond its symbolic weight in revolutionary history, today's Santa Clara is a living, young and culturally restless city. It is home to the 'Marta Abreu' Central University of Las Villas, one of the most important in Cuba, whose large student population gives the city a dynamic, open and youthful character that sets it apart from other cities in the country.
That energy is reflected in a notably active and diverse cultural and nightlife scene. The cultural center El Mejunje, set in the open-air ruins of an old building, has become a legendary space and a symbol of Santa Clara's openness: concerts, theater, trova gatherings and shows coexist there, in a tolerant and inclusive atmosphere, a pioneer in Cuba in terms of diversity. The city is considered one of the most liberal and artistic in the country.
Today Santa Clara thus combines several facets: that of the great sanctuary of revolutionary memory and of Che; that of a historic inland city, with its Parque Vidal and its Teatro La Caridad; and that of a university and cultural center full of life. Its central position also makes it a communications hub and an ideal base for exploring central Cuba, from colonial Remedios to the beach cays of the north. A city that looks to its history without ceasing to be, also, surprisingly modern.