The museum of the Clandestine Struggle is located Padre Pico steps up. This excellent museum, in one of the city’s finest colonial houses, focuses on the activities of the resistance movement under local martyr Frank País. Residents of Santiago were instrumental in supporting the Revolution, as were peasants in the Sierra Maestra. From the museum’s balcony, there are tremendous views of Santiago and the bay.

In Tivolí you’ll find the famous Padre Pico steps, named for a Santiaguero priest who aided the city’s poor. Fidel Castro once roared fire and brimstone down on the Batista government here, but today you’ll find more pacific chess and domino players who have set up all-hours tables on the steps.

Cuba's oldest museum was founded in 1899 by Emilio Bacardí Moreau, the former Santiago mayor whose rum-making family fled to Puerto Rico after the Revolution. It is just a few metres from the Parque Céspedes, in the heart of the city. The museum has an excellent collection of Cuban art, as well as some European works, some items from the wars of independence and an archaeological hall that features a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, two Peruvian skeletons and a shrunken head. It houses the most important painting gallery in Cuba, displaying an enviable collection of colonial painting dating back two centuries.

This Spanish-colonial mansion was the birthplace of poet José María Heredia, who, because of his pro-independence writings, is considered Cuba's first national poet. Heredia died in 1839 at age 36 while exiled in Mexico. The house, now just a fraction of its original size, displays period furniture and some of the poet's works and belongings. The home's traditional interior patio is planted with trees and plants—including orange, myrtle, palm, and jasmine—associated with Heredia's verse. A marble plaque on the house's Calle Heredia facade excerpts one of the poet's most famous works, "Niágara".