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Outstanding Data on the Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes
The house where the Cuban Father was born it is today recognized as the Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, which received the National Prize of Conservation in the 2014.
In its interior details of the revolution of 1868 against the Spanish troops can be seen, as well as objects and original documents that allow knowing different facets of the patriot’s life.
It is located exactly in front of the Revolution Square (old Weapons Square) of Bayamo.
Besides its values as the only property of two floors that survived the historical fire of the Bayamo City during the first Independence War, this house was the birth place of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y del Castillo on April 18th, 1819.
The first proprietors of the house were in fact the Cespedes parents who kept it no to less than 40 years.
During this whole period, the property only possessed the first floor and it is presumably that then it showed a roof of two waters creole tiles, like it was characteristic of the architecture of the time.
Likewise it had a water reservoir in the place where there is a fountain nowadays. The superior floor was added in 1833, for its following proprietors were the Medina-Sanchez family.
The Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and its Architecture
The construction of the walls of the first level dates of XVIII Century final period. The plant is in “C” form of and its structure is constituted by thick brick walls and cement, coated with lime and plaster.
The access to the interior of the building is through three high wooden doors that give entrance to the main living room.
The gallery is sustained by seven Tuscan order pilasters and it runs along a small patio, which has been ornamented with a neoclassicist fountain.
A hefty stairway of mahogany of two branches with handrails and rails, illuminated by an elliptic aye, leads at the second level of the house.
This level was built in 1833 and it has greater artistic riches. Their high walls are decorated with borders of different tonalities, with molds, stung and a more completed carpentry.
The substantial characteristics discovered in the housing where it resides today The Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes doesn’t respond to an unique style inside the Cuban colonial architecture.
This is due to that its two levels were built in different times and also to the transformations that it has suffered due to restorations along the years.
However, it can be associated from a general view to the Mudejar style that prevailed in the Spain south area during the XV century and that it was transplanted to Cuba after the conquest.
All these particularities make the property very attractive from the aesthetic point of view and it also wakes up the interest of studious of the Cuban history and art.
The Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes in the Revolution
In 1959 the Revolutionary Government intervened the house and so it became property of the Cuban state definitively.
For 1962 it was declared uninhabitable for the authorities and due to its advanced state of deterioration it was closed.
A capital restoration process lasted three years and allowed it to open its doors and later began like the Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes on September 30th 1968, only some days before the celebration of the Centennial of the Independence Shout , played by this great eminent man in The Demajagua.
Nine years after being offering its services like museum, on January 12th of 1978, the property was officially declared National Monument.
Activity of the Native House Museum of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes
This institution offers an exhibition based on the life and work of Carlos Manuel of Cespedes.
As museum it shows to the public visitor a great number of objects and original documents that illustrate different facets of this character’s activity. The exhibition is distributed in eleven rooms.
The first eight ones are located in the first plant and they are completely dedicated to the revolutionary martyr and his family.
The three remaining rooms are in the second plant of the property and they show a recreation of the interior atmospheres of a typical bourgeois home of final of the XIX Century and principles of the XX one.
To the collection two fully furnished kitchens like the epoch usage are also added.
