Havana’s Carlos III Avenue

Photo Feature by Ernesto González Díaz

HAVANA TIMES – If you ask anyone in Havana for Salvador Allende Ave. few people will know where it is or how to get there, but if you ask Carlos III, everyone knows. Salvador Allende is the official name of the street but it is popularly known as Carlos III, which was the name it had from the time when we were a Spanish colony.

Today it is one of the busiest avenues of the city and includes the Carlos III Shopping Center (Gov. businesses), one of the largest in the city, with dozens of small private businesses that swarm around the Shopping Center where you can get almost everything from bootleg music and movies to books and imported clothes and services such as jewelry repair and that for cell phones and home appliances.

But commerce is not the only attraction of the avenue. It also features the Masonic Grand Lodge of Cuba building, an imposing 11-story building, which has one of the city’s largest post offices on the ground floor.

The General Freyre Andrade Hospital, aka The Emergency Hospital, was recently renovated and serves a large part of the population of Centro Habana.  There is also the School of Veterinary Medicine and the Quinta de los Molinos, now converted into Institute of Science and Nuclear Technology, and which also served as the residence Gen. Máximo Gómez at the end of the Spanish-Cuban War, and where the first botanical garden in Cuba was located.

You can appreciate all this if you decide to stroll down Carlos III Ave.

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