CubaPLUS Magazine

The Emilio Bacardí Museum is distinguished, despite the time, by its majesty and elegance. Bacardi, with the category of provincial entity within Santiago de Cuba, which occupies a building with an eclectic style and neoclassical air, guarding valuable cultural treasures and historical buildings of the beautiful eastern city.

As they assume, it is named after its founder, who was mayor of the city of Santiago de Cuba, and one of its notable benefactors of multiple charitable social works, in favor of progress. It was the first museum and public library in the country and was born thanks to the deep interest of Don Emilio for preserving the valuable relics of the Cuban wars of independence. However, the museum exhibits a sample of the pre-Columbian Cuban communities and even an Egyptian mummy acquired by the illustrious founder in ancient Thebes, today the city of Luxor, Egypt.

Its official inauguration took place on January 12, 1899, but its current headquarters were built years later, in 1927, to make it more suitable, due to the way in which Its collection had grown in a relatively short time. With the theme of historical values at the center of its exhibitions, today it keeps and It also exhibits art and ethnography samples. Not only is national art present, also the foreign, among whom the European stands out.

Of great value is the tailcoat and vest that belonged to the National Hero of Cuba, José Martí, personal objects of the Father of the Nation, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, and others whose owner was the General Antonio Maceo, as well as belongings of other patriots. The institution, declared a National Monument for its centenary in 1999, is a prestige to those of its kind, not only in the beautiful and Caribbean Santiago de Cuba, but throughout the country.

One of the most outstanding values is that its central building stands in the historic center, where it represents one of the jewels of that urban environment that grew in its time. It is also worthy of mention throughout the national territory for its heritage cultural  value, and is a place with soul within the eastern city, located near the Sierra Maestra and which became the second most important city in the nation.

Don Emilio Bacardi and Moreau, along with his wife and later widow, Elvira Cape, are also considered  benefactors of the city and their countrymen are grateful and proud of the legacy left by them.