Address:Obrapia 60 e/ Mercaderes y San Ignacio, Habana Vieja
Construction date:Beginning of the 17th Century Restoration:Portico Restoration: 1985 Oscar Jiménez Rodríguez |
Current use:
Jacome Justiniano, descendant of an Italian family settled in Havana in the 17th Century built what was considered a simple house, according to the architectonical canons at that time, with an only one storey with a relatively high prop, tiles ceiling and plain façade with elongated spaces without adornments, excepting, at the main door, arranged with an admirable front in its primitive and ingenuous conception. Two lateral columns support a curved pediment broken with a rosette and two decorative spirals in its centre.
The house, one of the oldest in the city was demolished in 1956. The portico and the roof of the main hall were obtained by Maria Teresa Rojas, a colonial art collector who put them in her residence finished in 1959 and designed by architect Max Borges.
The roof is still there to be admired, today turned into a restaurant. The portico was reinstalled in its place of origin in 1985 through a complex operation that included its dismantling, transportation and placed it in each of the 114 pieces that shape it.