Past Watch Site

For more than two decades, famed author Ernest Hemingway occupied Finca Vigia, a hilltop villa 20 kilometers east of Havana. Built in 1886 by the Catalan architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer, the house was acquired in 1939 by Hemingway, who lived there until 1960. Today, Finca Vigia, which houses the Ernest Hemingway Museum, is in danger of collapse due to geotechnical instability and exposure to high humidity, wind and rain from hurricanes, aging, uncontrolled vegetation, and inappropriate renovations. A group of U.S. citizens founded the Hemingway Preservation Foundation, Inc. to restore the house and its collections. While the U.S. Treasury Department has granted the organization a license to carry out work, efforts to raise funds have been thwarted by the economic embargo against Cuba

UPDATE

Technical missions organized by the Watch nominator, the Finca Vigía Foundation, have been taking place since 2005 in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The house can still be visited and progress has been made in its preservation. An international colloquium on Ernest Hemingway took place in Havana in June 2009. The site received considerable publicity when an archive of Hemingway's papers found in the house was donated to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Massachusetts. The project has been hailed as a positive model for the future of US-Cuban relations, and in November 2010 the team was presented with a Heritage Award for International Excellence by the U.S. National Committee of ICOMOS.

Last update: December 2010