Cuba · Provincia de Camagüey
Where to Stay in Camagüey, Provincia de Camagüey
Camagüey is a colonial city of central Cuba, a town of an old maze-like heart of plazas and churches, famous for its great clay water jars.
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Where to stay in Camagüey
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Where you stay in Camagüey turns on the old town or the edge. The lanes around the main plaza keep the churches, the tinajones, and the museums within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the maze and its plazas. The crooked lanes twist away.
Clay jars fill the courtyards. Out toward the ring roads and the plains, the town gives way to the newer quarters, the cattle country, and the wide flatland. A room out of the centre trades the maze for the open avenues, the green pastures, and the long roads of the plain.
The plains run to the sky. Stay downtown for the churches, or out for the plains. The old maze of plazas sits just inside the ring roads.
About Camagüey
Camagüey is the maze city of central Cuba.
What is Camagüey known for?
On the wide cattle plains of the island's heart, it grew as an old colonial town, and it keeps a tangle of crooked lanes and little plazas laid out to foil the pirates of old, a crowd of fine baroque churches, the great clay tinajones that catch the rain in its courtyards, and a famous ballet and a poet's memory. The flat plains run to the sky. The old lanes twist and turn.
What are the main landmarks in Camagüey?
The old maze is the wonder of Camagüey. The tangle of crooked lanes and small plazas at the city's heart, dotted with old churches and lined with pastel houses, is a world heritage of the colonial age, the emblem of the town, in its centre. Clay jars stand in the yards.
The great tinajones, huge earthen pots that catch the rain, sit in courtyards all through the old town, while the baroque churches, the ballet, and the cattle plains mark the country around Camagüey.
What is the history of Camagüey?
Camagüey moved inland to escape the sea. One of the first Spanish towns on Cuba, it was founded on the coast but soon shifted inland to the cattle plains, out of the reach of the raiders who plagued the shore. The pirates still came.
When buccaneers sacked the town all the same, its people laid out a tangle of twisting lanes and blind plazas so that no raider could find his way, and the maze still baffles all who walk it. Cattle and clay made the town. On the wide plains the ranchers raised great herds, and in the dry season they caught the rain in huge clay jars, the tinajones, that stood in every yard.
The town bred heroes and poets. A famous patriot of the wars for freedom and a great poet of the island both came from Camagüey, and the city kept a famed ballet, so that it lived by its cattle, its churches, and its arts, keeping its maze, its jars, and its plazas. The tinajones still hold the rain.
Camagüey keeps its maze and its churches on the plains of Cuba.
Where is Camagüey?
Camagüey lies in the middle of Cuba, on the great flat plains of the island's centre. The city spreads over low ground far from either coast, on a wide plain of cattle pasture and sugar and scrub, with no mountains near and the flat land running to the sea on both sides. Cattle plains run flat and green.
The wide sky stretches far.
What is the climate of Camagüey?
Out on the Camagüey plain the climate runs tropical, warm and wet. Warm weather holds all year on the plains, with a hot rainy summer, the risk of a storm off the sea, and a drier, milder winter. The summer brings heat and rain.
Winter stays warm and dry.
How do you get to Camagüey?
Camagüey lies in the middle of Cuba, on the central highway and rail line. Trains and buses run to it along the island from Havana and the east, and its airport brings in visitors. Roads cross the cattle plains.
Havana lies far to the west.
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Updated August 2026