Museo Municipal Emilio Bacardí Moreau

This museum (Pío Rosado, e/ Aguilera and Heredia, tel. 022/62-8402; Tues.–Sat. 9 a.m.–9 p.m., Sun. 9 a.m.–1 p.m.; CUC2) was founded by Emilio Bacardí Moreau (1844–1922) in 1899 and contains his astounding collection. A member of the expatriate and anti-Castroite Bacardí rum family, Emilio, patriot writer and mayor of Santiago, is in good graces; he was imprisoned in the Morro Castle for his revolutionary activities. The museum is housed in a huge neoclassical edifice with Corinthian columns in the heart of Santiago’s oldest quarter.

The first floor contains a miscellany of colonial artifacts, from slave shackles and stocks to a huge array of antique weapons. The second floor art gallery includes 19th-century and contemporary works by leading figures. Also here: a small but impressive display of pre-Columbian artifacts from throughout the Americas, including colorful feather headdresses, a shrunken head (cabeza reducida), pottery shards, and Peruvian mummies.

The museum fronts a tiny plaza on whose north side rises the 1920s neoclassical Palacio Provincial, seat of local government.