Historic Centre of Cienfuegos

Cienfuegos was founded in 1819 on the south coast of Spanish Cuba as the Colony Fernandina de Jagua. Its first inhabitants were partly Spanish and partly settlers of French origin from Bordeaux, Louisiana and Philadelphia, led by Don Luis de Clouet, a native of Louisiana. The name honoured King Ferdinand VII of Spain and the local chief Jagua.

In the 1830s the colony grew on sugar production and its favourable location, and it was allowed to trade at home and abroad. By the 1860s it was the third city of Cuba, and a railway to the inland city of Santa Clara was built between 1853 and 1860. The town was first built in the neoclassical style and later became more eclectic while keeping a harmonious townscape.

After the war of independence, North American capital arrived, and by 1914 American investors owned the most important sugar mills in the province. The Government Palace, San Lorenzo School, the Bishopric and the Ferrer Palace survive in a town that was the first example of the new ideas of modernity, hygiene and order in Latin American urban planning of the 19th century. It was inscribed in 2005.