Hotel Ambos-Mundos
| Hotel Ambos Mundos | |
|---|---|
 |
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| General information | |
| Location | Havana, Cuba |
| Address | Calle Obispo ("Bishop Street") no. 153, La Habana |
| Opening | 1925 |
| Owner | Habaguanex S.A. |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 5 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Luis Wise Hernandez |
| Other information | |
| Number of rooms | 52 |
| Number of suites | 3 |
| Website | |
| www.hotelambosmundos-cuba.com | |
The Hotel Ambos Mundos (Spanish pronunciation: [oˈtel ˈambos ˈmundos], Both Worlds Hotel) is a hotel of square form with five floors, built with an eclectic set of characteristics of 20th-century style architecture. It was built in 1924 on a site that previously had been occupied by an old family house on the corner of Calle Obispo and Mercaderes (Bishop and Merchants Streets) in La Habana Vieja (Old Havana), Cuba. It is a frequent tourist destination because it was home to the popular writer Ernest Hemingway for seven years in the 1930s.
From colonial times the zone of Old Havana in which the building is now sited was populated by a diverse collection of family houses. At the beginning of the 20th century the Spanish retailer Antolín Blanco Arias bought a family house on the site, from his office colleague Manuel Llerandi y Tomé. The new owner demolished the very old house to construct the hotel, the work being in charge of the architect Luis Wise Hernandez.
In the 1930s this hotel was the property of the Asper family. Hotel Ambos Mundos was a family hotel, that attracted writers, actor and actresses and many Americans.
This hotel since has gained international note from its most famous long-time tenant: in 1932 a room on the upper (5th) floor became the “first home” in Cuba of writer Ernest Hemingway, who enjoyed the views of Old Havana, and the harbor sea in which he fished frequently in his yacht Pilar. Hemingway rented the room for $1.50 per night ($1.75 for double occupancy) until mid-1939, when he transferred his winter residence from Key West (a U.S. island 90 miles from Cuba) to a house in the hills near Havana, Finca Vigia, which he shared with Martha Gellhorn (they were married in 1940). Hemingway began his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel of the Spanish Civil War which he had witnessed over the previous several years, in the room in the Ambos Mundos, on March 1, 1939.
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Wikipedia