The Cathedral "Nuestra Señora de la Asunción", arises at the beginning of the XVI century in the village of Baracoa. At that time this church was known with the name of La Iglesia Parroquial de la Villa de Baracoa. The church is best known for preserving the Cruz de la Parra that Columbus supposedly used when he came ashore in 1492 to claim Cuba for Spain and Christianity. Indeed, carbon dating has confirmed that the cross was fashioned in the late 1400s and is old enough to have been brought by the explorer. It can be stated with certainty that this is one of oldest crosses (perhaps the oldest) in the New World. 

In the Main Square is a bust of Hatuey, the brave Indian leader who resisted early conquistadores until he was caught by the Spanish and burned at the stake. There’s also a very lively Casa de la Trova here. It is worth wandering along the Malecón, the seaside avenue, from the snug Fuerte Matachín (an early 19th-century fort that has a small but informative municipal museum inside) to the Hotel La Rusa, which is named after a legendary Russian émigrée who over the years hosted celebrities such as Che Guevara and Errol Flynn.

A peculiar elevation of vertical slopes and flat top located 8 km off the Baracoa city, Columbus described it in his diary notes of his first trip to Cuba in 1492. El Yunque de Baracoa, declared National Monument and symbol of the city of Baracoa, considered an ecological island that called the attention of Admiral Christopher Columbus in his first trip to the Americas, serving as an orientation feature due to its unusual characteristics (flat topped). The fauna of the Yunque is rich and diverse there are abundant woodpeckers, humming birds, jutias, lizards, reptiles. There is a natural viewpoint at 573 m, from which one can see a vast landscape of green mountains and rivers with the Bay of Baracoa as backdrop.

Around Baracoa are several dozen pre-Columbian archaeological sites related to the two major indigenous groups that once inhabited the region. It is a marvellous facility for lovers of history and archaeology, situated in a colonial ambiance on the second terrace of Seboruco, known as Paradise Heights. The area in which it is located is rich in remains of our first population. The Paradise Cave Archaeological Museum contains a copy of the Taíno tobacco idol found nearby in 1903 (the original is in Havana).