El Comendador
History: This house is located next to the established nucleus of San Cristobal de la Habana in 1519, as well as the Carena´s Port, key points in the genesis of the City.In the final half of the 16th century, the lands and houses located in this site, belonged to the First Councilor and Treasurer of the Crown, Don Juan Bautista de Rojas, from whom the Villa bought the constructions he had rented to the Town Council and the Audience, as well as Warehouses of the Port. Between 1781 and 1782, the Mayor of this City, Don Baltazar de Sotolongo, requested to be granted the small constructions of the area, including a very old butcher shop and a fish market, to build a property that was sold in 1801 to Don Pedro Regalado Pedroso y Zayas commander of the Order Elizabeth the Catholic. In 1864, the property suffered an important transformation, in which a mezzanine was added and acquired the aspect that distinguishes this mansion nowadays.
The House is inherited by Don Pedro Regalado Pedroso, “Commander of the Order Charles III ”.From that moment on, there were a great number of proprietors belonging to the Pedroso family that acquired this mansion to enjoy the benefits of its rent and in the first decades of the 20th century, the ground floor of the property turns into a café, tavern, a snack bar and a window for the sale of cigarettes and tobacco and the rest of the house was used as offices and housing until 1961 when it became a Tenement House.
For the importance of its location, in the oldest area of the city, together with the advanced state of deterioration of the House, in imminent collapse danger, the Office of the Historian of the City determined to begin its restoration and rehabilitation as a Monument of a First Degree of Protection, since September 1997, ending this work in the last months of 1999, totally restored in its new function of Inn, giving lodging service and endowed with 14 rooms with bathroom, a tavern and an Archaeological site room.
The House is located at 55 Obrapía and Baratillo streets and it consists of a ground floor, mezzanine and an upper floor developed in a trapezoidal form. The compartment of the passages is limited and rigid, conformed by a thick wall and an ordinary masonry with plaster that supports the wooden roof and the two water tiles in the external passages and plane covers in the interiors.
The bent entrance evokes houses of the old Hispanic Mudejar style. Parallel to the front passage there is a gallery that goes directly to the central yard with two columns carved in stone that are repeated in the Mezzanine, being substituted by two wooden stands that support the hangings of wood and tiles. The other three sides of the yard are surrounded with balconies that communicate with a passage at the rear part of the house also protected with tiles. In the archaeological excavations of the latrines was found a sewer dug in the natural rock with dimensions about 4 by 4 m.
There were two drainage channels, one of them where the garbage of the superior floors were spilled and where small bottles of French perfumes and two golden rings were rescued and the other that probably communicated with the stable. In the bottom of this sewer there was also the inferior part of an old well where three devices of aborigine origin were found, pieces that allow us to affirm that the collector was used as a garbage area between 1550 and 1650.In two of the corners of this latrine three burials of newborns were exhumed, five skulls of adults and two jaws, distributed in two burial areas and associated with diverse materials such as wood and iron. These remains date from the second half of the 14th century and probably correspond to a certain ritual of Afro-Cuban origin.
Rooms
Total: 14 / simple: 1 / Doubles: 10 / suites: 3
Services
– Tavern “Onda”
– Breakfast room
– Snack Bar
– Bazaar
– Reading room
– Archeological site room
– Cable Tv
– Local and international telephone
– Safe deposit box
– Mini bar
– Air conditioning
– Booking
– Taxi