Blog

The Granma Memorial is a museum partly open-air and partly housed in a splendid colonial building that traces the most important moments of the 1950s and the Cuban revolution.

It was inaugurated on December 1, 1976, and preserves a precious collection of pieces that will let you relive the history of the Revolution as it has been told to Cubans from the very beginning.

You will see the Granma yacht, protagonist of the first revolutionary uprisings on November 24 and 25, 1956,
on the vessel 82 revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro were crammed as he returned to Cuba after exile, departing from the Mexican port of TUXPAN heading to Cuba to start the revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista. On board, besides Fidel, were Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, Francisco Medina P, Juan Almeida, Ramiro Valdés and other figures recognized as key pieces of the Cuban revolution.

The journey was not easy due to the excessive number of people on board, the continuous bad weather and the poor condition of the vessel. They landed after more than seven days instead of the planned three, two kilometers from the intended destination, Playa Las Coloradas, today in the province of Granma.

The Granma Memorial is considered one of the most important Cuban museums, for the quantity and value of its heritage, for the completeness of its exhibition and for its cultural, historical and political work. The more than 30 rooms are visited every year by more than 300,000 visitors.

It is an open-air exhibition that displays various objects also linked to the Cuban revolution: vehicles, airplanes (a Seafury and a King Fisher), a tank used in the Bay of Pigs, a bomber.

Near the museum there is a Soviet SU-100 destroyer. The visit ends at the monument to the heroes of the new and eternal nation, whose eternal flame was lit by the leader of the Cuban Revolution on April 19, 1989.

If you are in Havana, this visit will move you by letting you relive the ideas that inspired the young revolutionaries of that era.