Unmapped Gems
FusterlandiaFusterlandia, Havana
Folk art neighbourhoodHavanaCuba

Fusterlandia

Best time
A weekday morning, in daylight
Getting there
Jaimanitas, at the far western edge of Havana near Marina Hemingway — a taxi ride from the centre

Why it’s in the log

Jaimanitas was a modest fishing barrio on Havana's western edge when the artist José Rodríguez Fuster began covering his own house there in ceramic mosaic in 1994. Then it spread: with the agreement of the people who lived in them, the mosaics moved onto his neighbours' houses, walls, benches and bus stops, until the area came to be known as Fusterlandia.

The style borrows openly — Gaudí and Picasso are the names critics reach for — and mixes them with Cuban and Santería imagery. It is on every surface you look at: rooftops, archways, staircases, faces set into the walls.

Fuster's own house and studio sit at the centre of it. It is a working home and gallery rather than an attraction with a timetable, so hours vary, and the streets around it are a lived-in neighbourhood — treat them as one.