Morro Castle
Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro
Interesting facts
- The British finally took the Morro in 1762 by tunnelling a mine under one of its bastions and blowing a breach in the wall.
- The Spanish had left undefended the La Cabaña hill, slightly higher than the Morro, despite a royal order to fortify it; British batteries were set up there.
- By late June 1762 British guns were hitting the Morro about 500 times a day, and its garrison was rotated out every three days from sheer exhaustion.
- A naval attack by four British ships of the line on 1 July 1762 failed: the fort stood too high, and its guns left one ship to be scuttled.
- Malaria and yellow fever ravaged the besiegers; by late July some 5,000 British soldiers and 3,000 sailors were reported sick.
- Offered the chance to write his own terms of surrender, Velasco replied that the matter would be settled by force of arms.
- After Havana's fall, the Spanish governor and admiral were court-martialled in Spain for failing to defend the city better.
- The fortress follows the irregular outline of its rock, and on many sides the cliffs drop more than 18 metres to the sea.
- The tower has served as a lighthouse since 1764; the present tower, about 30 metres tall, replaced a 10-metre one in the 1840s and was electrified in 1945.
- After 1763 engineers Silvestre Abarca and Agustín Crame rebuilt the damaged castle, adding two bastions, a deep moat and the Twelve Apostles battery.
Why it is worth it
Rising straight out of the rock at the mouth of Havana Bay, the pale stone walls of the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro have watched every ship enter Cuba's capital for more than four centuries. The name honours the Three Kings of the Bible, while "morro" is the Spanish word for a headland rock that serves sailors as a landmark. Work began in 1589, after repeated raids on the city, to designs by the Italian military engineer Battista Antonelli, who shaped many of Spain's Caribbean defences.
The castle follows the angular plan of Renaissance fortification, its bastions cut into and built up from the cliff above the narrow harbour entrance. Together with the smaller fort of La Punta on the opposite shore, it closed the channel with a chain boom stretched across the water. Its decisive test came in 1762, during the Seven Years' War, when a British expedition under the Earl of Albemarle laid siege to Havana. The Spanish commander, Luis Vicente de Velasco, held the Morro for weeks; when British troops finally stormed the walls on 30 July he was mortally wounded, and the city surrendered in August. Spain recovered Havana the next year under the Treaty of Paris and then built the vast fortress of La Cabaña on the ridge behind the Morro, completed in 1774.
The lighthouse that crowns the castle was added in 1846 and is now as much a symbol of Havana as the fortress itself. Across the bay lies Old Havana, the colonial core of the city, which with its system of fortifications was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1982. A colonial custom survives nearby: every night at nine a cannon is fired from the harbour fortifications, the shot that once signalled the closing of the city gates.
Getting there
The castle stands on the eastern side of the harbour entrance, about 2 km from Centro Habana, and is reached by road through the tunnel under the bay. José Martí International Airport (HAV) is about 19 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, also known as Castillo del Morro, is a fortress guarding the entrance to the Havana harbor. The design is by the Italian engineer Battista Antonelli (1547–1616). Originally under the control of Spain, the fortress was captured by the British in 1762 and returned to Spain under the Treaty of Paris (1763) a year later. The Morro Castle was the primary defence in the Havana harbor until La Cabaña was completed in 1774.
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