Five-Star Palace in Trinidad, Cuba

New restoration attempt tries to bring light to symbol in Trinidad.

Residents in Trinidad, a tourist destination in south-central Cuba, lament the deplorable state of the Iznaga Palace, “vegetating” for decades, with several failed restoration attempts.

Under the board of Encanto Hotels, the Cubanacan Chain will work on a new endeavor to construct 10 rooms in the heritage building, and 31 in a new property. According to preliminary calculations, the work will cost about 13 million pesos, and must be completed in about 22 months.

“It’s a bold-intervention, ensures Giddel Yhanes Calero, director of the investment unit in the Iznaga Palace, because it involves the construction of a completely new building, so it was necessary for Trinidad’s specialists and architects who undertook the work in the Havana-based Project Company (EPROB) to negotiate before they gave us the final result to be executed”.

In words of planners and investors of the work, the original building, whose structures will be preserved to the fullest, will allow to represent the historical period, while the townhouse is inspired in the codes of the colonial house, so that Trinidad’s identity could be witnessed even with the contemporary insertion.

According to preliminary calculations, the work will cost about 13 million pesos, and must be completed in about 22 months.

By then, locals will be attending the transfiguration of every inch of the building they worship with almost religious devotion and prefer to leave in the “hands” of tourism before it crumbles piece by piece under the overwhelming weight of scarcity and neglect.