La Bodeguita del Medio

In 1942 Ángel Martínez bought a small grocery on Calle Empedrado, La Complaciente, and renamed it Casa Martínez. He sold Cuban staples and served the occasional dinner, but mostly people came to drink with their friends — and the place took its present name, La Bodeguita del Medio, officially on 26 April 1950. Writers and artists found it early: Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral and the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén were among the regulars, and Guillén's poem to the bar, "Un brindis lejano a La Bodeguita", still hangs framed on the wall.

Two of its famous claims don't hold up as well as the bar would like. It calls itself the birthplace of the mojito, which is disputed. And the line on the wall attributed to Ernest Hemingway — "My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita" — has never been authenticated; he may have said it, but no one has proved he wrote it.

The signatures are the real history, and even they have one: after 1959 the bar was closed and its walls painted over, losing the originals. It reopened with help from Salvador Allende, later president of Chile, and the signatures were redrawn from surviving photographs. Visitors have been adding their own ever since.

It is state-run, small and very much on every Havana itinerary; the mojitos are the point rather than the price. Go early in the afternoon, before the tour groups, or late, when there's music.