Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Cobre

Dominating the town from atop a small hillock is the ocher-colored, red-domed, triple-towered Basílica del Cobre (tel. 022/36118; daily 6:30 a.m.–6 p.m.). The church—Cuba’s only basilica—was erected in 1927 (a hermitage has occupied the site since 1608, however) and is a national shrine. Once a year, thousands of devoted Cubans make their way along the winding road, many crawling painfully uphill to fulfill a promise made to the saint at some difficult moment in their lives. The unlucky fisherman in Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea promises to “make a pilgrimage to the Virgin de Cobre” if he wins his battle with the massive marlin. In 1952, Hemingway dedicated his Nobel Prize for Literature to the Virgin, placing it in her shrine.

The front entrance is reached via a steep staircase. More usual is to enter at the rear, from the parking lot. Touts will rush forward to sell you iron pyrite (fool’s gold) culled from the residue of the nearby mine. “Es real!” they say, attempting to put a small piece in your hand. Here, the church lobby—the Sala de Milagros (Salon of Miracles)—contains a small chapel with a silver altar crowded with votive candles and flowers. To left and right are tables with miscellaneous objects placed in offering. On the walls hang scores of silver adornment and little milagros of limbs and other body parts. The two centuries of ex-votos include a small gold figure left by Castro’s mother, Lina Ruz, to protect her two sons, Fidel and Raúl, during the war in the Sierra Maestra. Incredibly, here too are bequests for the freedom of Cuban political prisoners.

The church nave has a large marble altarpiece and stained-glass windows. The Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Virgin of Charity), the patron saint of Cuba to whom miraculous powers are ascribed, resides in effigy in an air-conditioned glass case in a separate altar above the main altar. You can view her up close by taking a staircase marked subida from the lobby. The virgin’s figure, clad in a golden cloak and crown, is surrounded by a sea of flowers, and the entire shrine is suffused with narcotic scents.

Masses (misas) are offered Monday–Saturday (except Wed.) at 8 a.m., on the eighth day and the first Thursday of each month at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 8 and 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.