Callejón de Hamel

In April 1990 the painter Salvador González Escalona came to this alley to paint a mural on a friend's house and kept going. Over the years that followed he covered it in murals of Afro-Cuban deities and sculpture made from whatever was to hand — old bathtubs, hand pumps, bicycle parts — and the neighbourhood turned a forgotten back street into a gallery that belongs to it. He died in 2021; the alley carries on.

Every Sunday from around noon it fills with rumba: drums, song and dance from local groups, free to watch. It is crowded and it is for the neighbourhood first, so tip the musicians.

The rest of the week is quieter, which is the time to actually look at the walls. The alley is named after Fernando Belleau Hamel, a businessman who ran a foundry here and built houses for the people who worked in it.