{"page":"\u003clink rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://lessonplanet.com/assets/packs/css/resources-c03aa079.css\" /\u003e\n\u003clink rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://lessonplanet.com/assets/packs/css/lp_boclips_stylesheets-517835be.css\" media=\"all\" /\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-title='Iconic Hotel Nacional celebrates 80th birthday' data-url='/boclips/videos/5c54c250d8eafeecae158ca4' data-video-url='/boclips/videos/5c54c250d8eafeecae158ca4' id='bo_player_modal'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='boclips-resource-page modal-dialog panel-container'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='react-notifications-root'\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-header'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-type'\u003e\n\u003ci aria-hidden='true' class='fai fa-regular fa-circle-play'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\nVideo\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch1 class='rp-title' id='video-title'\u003e\nIconic Hotel Nacional celebrates 80th birthday\n\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-actions'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='mr-1'\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"btn btn-success\" data-posthog-event=\"Signup: LP Signup Activity\" data-posthog-location=\"body_link_boclips\" data-remote=\"true\" href=\"/subscription/new\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGet Free Access\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\"\u003e for 10 Days\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e!\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-body'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-info'\u003e\n\u003cdiv aria-label='Hide resource details' class='rp-hide-info' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u0026times;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ci aria-label='Expand resource details' class='rp-expand-info fai fa-solid fa-up-right-and-down-left-from-center' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003ci aria-label='Compress resource details' class='rp-compress-info fai fa-solid fa-down-left-and-up-right-to-center' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-rating'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='resource-pool'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='pool-label'\u003ePublisher:\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan class='pool-name'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='text'\u003e\u003ca data-publisher-id=\"30356011\" href=\"/search?publisher_ids%5B%5D=30356011\"\u003eCurated Video\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-description'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='short-description'\u003e1. Wide of bus driving towards front entrance of Hotel Nacional2. Various exteriors3. Tilt down from porch ceiling detail to stairs and tourists4. Various lobby interiors5. Tilt down from tourists to large floor tile reading \"Hotel...\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan class='full-description hide'\u003e1. Wide of bus driving towards front entrance of Hotel Nacional\u003cbr/\u003e2. Various exteriors\u003cbr/\u003e3. Tilt down from porch ceiling detail to stairs and tourists\u003cbr/\u003e4. Various lobby interiors\u003cbr/\u003e5. Tilt down from tourists to large floor tile reading \"Hotel Nacional - 1930\"\u003cbr/\u003e6. Pull out of Morro Castle to family in hotel gardens\u003cbr/\u003e7. Various exteriors of hotel and gardens\u003cbr/\u003e8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pepa Gutierrez Ortega, Tourist from Seville, Spain\u003cbr/\u003e\"It's as if we shared a bit of history with the people who were here before. It's as if I've been in the same place as 'Tarzan', 'Gilda', those characters and Humphrey Bogart. We share the same space and I think it's worth it. All you have to do is look around and you realise that being here is worth it.\"\u003cbr/\u003e9. Picture of late US actor Johnny Weissmuller in hotel \"Hall of Fame\"\u003cbr/\u003e10. Picture of 1940's hotel guests including US actor and dancer Fred Astaire, US actress Rita Hayworth, former British prime minister Winston Churchill and late Mexican actor Cantinflas\u003cbr/\u003e11. Close of picture with guests including early US organised crime figures Meyer Lansky and Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano\u003cbr/\u003e12. Tilt up picture of US film director Steven Spielberg\u003cbr/\u003e13. Zoom out from picture of Australian-American actor Errol Flynn to tourists drinking\u003cbr/\u003e14. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Antonio Martinez Rodriguez, Hotel general manager\u003cbr/\u003e\"Here history is present, it has been maintained and is also documented. It is also still very much alive. This is the greatest enchantment we can offer. We are very proud that within that enchantment is our Cuban heritage.\"\u003cbr/\u003e15. Tilt down exterior of hotel to gardens with fountain\u003cbr/\u003e16. Top shot of hotel swimming pool\u003cbr/\u003e17. Wide exterior of hotel\u003cbr/\u003eHavana's iconic Hotel Nacional marks its 80th birthday on Thursday, wearing its slightly shabby elegance with pride.\u003cbr/\u003eThe hotel has welcomed movie stars and mobsters, but today's visitors are mostly tourists from Britain and Spain hoping to get a taste of the past at the apricot-coloured monolith on Havana's seaside Malecon boulevard.\u003cbr/\u003eThe hotel's story reads like a parable of recent Cuban history, chronicling the island's evolution from naughty tropical playground to communism's Caribbean enclave.\u003cbr/\u003e\"Here history is present, it has been maintained and is also documented. It is also still very much alive,\" said general manager Antonio Martinez Rodriguez. \u003cbr/\u003e\"That is the greatest enchantment we can offer. We are very proud that within that enchantment is our Cuban heritage.\"\u003cbr/\u003eOpened in 1930 as a rum-soaked getaway for Mafia dons and Hollywood starlets, the Nacional became a training centre for illiterate peasant women after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. \u003cbr/\u003eIt shuttered around the time of the collapse of the island's Soviet protectorate and was reborn following a major overhaul as a source of much-needed foreign currency.\u003cbr/\u003eThe past has left its scars on the stone-and-concrete building, in the bullet holes that once pockmarked the facade, leftovers from a 1933 rebellion, and in the network of Cuban Missile Crisis-era tunnels and anti-aircraft positions still carved into the garden.\u003cbr/\u003eIts register reads like a \"Who's Who\" of the 20th century. \u003cbr/\u003eLuminaries like Winston Churchill and Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and Gabriel Garcia Marquez rubbed shoulders with mobsters like Lucky Luciano. \u003cbr/\u003eStars including Errol Flynn and Rita Hayworth slept under the same roof as Mickey Mantle and Fred Astaire.\u003cbr/\u003eToday, VIPs like Steven Spielberg, Kate Moss, Javier Bardem and Sean Penn occasionally light the place up.\u003cbr/\u003eDuring the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the five-star hotel served as backdrop for some of the brinksmanship that brought the world to close to nuclear war. \u003cbr/\u003eAs the standoff neared the boiling point, Cuban soldiers dug a web of invisible tunnels beneath the verdant lawns and installed three Soviet anti-aircraft guns.\u003cbr/\u003eThe Nacional was also the scene of a bombing by an anti-Castro group. \u003cbr/\u003eIn July, 1997, an explosive planted in the lobby went off, wounding a guest and several hotel employees. \u003cbr/\u003eThe blast, part of a campaign that also targeted other Havana hotels, was aimed at destabilising Cuba's fragile economy as the country turned to tourism to substitute Soviet largesse after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.\u003cbr/\u003ePlans for the hotel were hatched in the late 1920s under President Gerardo Machado. \u003cbr/\u003eThough the Cuban government was ostensibly behind the lion's share of 7 (M) million USD investment, general manager Martinez said much of the impetuous for the project came from the mob, which was flush with Prohibition-era cash.\u003cbr/\u003eThe Nacional was designed and built by US firms. \u003cbr/\u003eIt took the crew of 8-thousand workers 14 months to finish the building, an architectural Frankenstein that combines elements of Art Deco, Baroque, Spanish colonial and Latin American criollo styles.\u003cbr/\u003eMarketed as a tropical paradise, the casino and cabaret delivered no-holds-barred fun to the Nacional's then-largely American clientele, and the mafia pocketed the profits, Martinez said.\u003cbr/\u003eIn December of 1946, about 500 mafiosos descended on the hotel for a mob summit, an event immortalised in fictional form in \"The Godfather Part II.\" \u003cbr/\u003eDuring the six-day-long gathering, the dons divided up the spoils of Cuba's lucrative gambling, drug and prostitution rackets, said historian and sometimes tour guide Estela Rivas. \u003cbr/\u003eHer visits include a stop in the second-floor suite where Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky held their talks.\u003cbr/\u003eRivas' tours also visit the hotel's cabaret, where showgirls in marabou feathers and strategically placed sequins continue to enthrall, and the Churchill Bar, where Britain's wartime prime minister liked to relax with a Romeo y Julieta brand cigar during his 1946 stay.\u003cbr/\u003eThe Nacional's decades of high-wattage glamour and anything-goes decadence came to an abrupt end in 1959 with the triumph of Castro's revolution.\u003cbr/\u003eThe hotel was nationalised, its walls hung with pro-communist banners. \u003cbr/\u003eHundreds of rural women learned to read and sew there, and the hotel later lodged Soviet engineers and honeymooners from across the island.\u003cbr/\u003eNowadays, some 86-thousand tourists pass through the Nacional's 426 rooms each year, Martinez said. \u003cbr/\u003eWith standard rooms priced at the modest rate of 120 convertible pesos (129 USD) per night, the hotel attracts mostly middle class Europeans and also some Americans, who defy the nearly half-century-long US embargo against the island.\u003cbr/\u003e\"It's as if we shared a bit of history with the people who were here before,\" gushed Pepa Gutierrez Ortega, a guest from Seville, Spain.\u003cbr/\u003e\"All you have to do is look around and you realise that being here is worth it.\"\u003cbr/\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='action-container flex justify-between'\u003e\n\u003cbutton aria-expanded='false' aria-label='Read more description' class='rp-full-description' type='button'\u003e\n\u003ci class='fai fa-solid fa-align-left'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003cspan id='read_more'\u003eRead 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