The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway's Havana and Cojímar

Long before the novella, Hemingway's Cuba began here. In 1932 a room on the fifth floor of this hotel in Old Havana became his first home on the island, with views of the old city and the harbour where he fished in his yacht Pilar. He kept coming until 1939, when he moved to a house in the hills outside the city. The hotel stands at the corner of Calle Obispo and Mercaderes, and room 511 is now a small museum.

Visitor guidance: Room 511 is a small museum with daytime tours; the lobby has photographs of Hemingway.

A short walk down Calle Obispo from the hotel, the Floridita was one of Hemingway's favourite hangouts in Havana. Its bartender Constante is credited with inventing the frozen daiquiri in the early 1930s, and the bar's motto is "la cuna del daiquiri", the cradle of the daiquiri. In the novella, the old man and the boy talk baseball and Joe DiMaggio. A life-size bronze of the writer stands at the end of the bar.

Visitor guidance: Open as a bar and restaurant; expect tourists around the statue.

Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea at this house outside Havana, between December 1950 and February 1951. It tells of an aging fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without a catch, and tradition ties the book's fisherman to nearby Cojímar and the waters off Havana. He bought the finca with royalties from his previous novel. It is now a museum, restored by the Cuban government and reopened to tourists in 2007.

Visitor guidance: Museum in San Francisco de Paula; check opening days before you go.

Cojímar is a historic fishing village about seven kilometres east of Havana, and the place Hemingway's story belongs to. Santiago, the old fisherman, rows far out into the Gulf Stream to hunt a giant marlin. Hemingway kept his own boat, the Pilar, here, and his first mate Gregorio Fuentes is often said to be the model for Santiago, though Hemingway himself said the character was based on no one in particular.

Location precision: The novella never names the village; the pin marks Cojímar, where the Pilar was docked.

Visitor guidance: A seaside village on the coast east of Havana; walk the waterfront.

The village's La Terraza restaurant became a famous haunt for the writer, and it is still there. Hemingway often sailed from Cojímar on fishing expeditions. The seed of his story came from the Cuban guide Carlos Gutiérrez, who had told him about an old man and a giant marlin. Here the book's world, the fishermen and their tales, meets the table where its author sat.

Visitor guidance: A working restaurant on Martí Real in Cojímar.