The Casa del Conde de
Casa Bayona is located on the San Ignacio street #61, between
the Empedrado and the O’Reillly streets, on the south side of
the Plaza de la Catedral, opposite to the Catedral de San
Cristóbal de La Habana.
The Casa del Conde de Casa Bayona
is the oldest of the outstanding buildings of the
architectural complex that surrounds the Plaza de la
Catedral. It houses the Museo de Arte Colonial (Museum of
Colonial Art) today.
The record about this
building dates back, as early as, to 1622, but it became
known
just a century later by its most
important inhabitant, Lieutenant Colonel
Luis Chacón,
the Captain General and Governor of Cuba (provisional
on two occasions in 1702-1706 and 1711-1713).
Even though, he ceased to rule as governor, he continued to
live in Havana. His daughter Luisa was married José Bayona y Chacón, Fernández de
Córdoba y Castellón, the Mayor of Havana, that bought
and rebuilt the house in 1720. When José Bayona y Chacón
received the title of the first count of the Casa Bayona by
a Royal Decree in return of purchasing the city of Guipúcoa
in Spain for 20.000 ducats in 1721, the residence became to
be called as the Casa del Conde de Casa Bayona, although it
was occupied by Luis Chacón in 1726 and thereafter. José
Bayona y Chacón applied to the court, when his neighbor
Marquis of Arcos closed the alley by joining his opposing
houses, but the court ruled in favor of the Marquis, but
gave the count the permission to build a porch in front of
his mansion, although this never came true.
The elegant mansion
went through several inadequate restoration processes, but
the successive reconstructions damaged its
resplendence to a great extent. From the
second half of the 19th century until 1959, the building was
occupied by different renowned institutions like the
Colegio de Escribanos Forenses
(Forensic Notaries Association) and
the newspaper La Discusión (1879-1889). In 1930, it
became the Club Bar of Havana, which served as the setting
for the British spy comedy film based on the novel Our Man
in Havana by Graham Greene, in the scene in which Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness) meets Captain Segura (Ernie
Kovacs). In the 1940s, it housed the offices and warehouses
of the famous liquor company José Arechabala SA.
Atter a restoration the building was inaugurated as the Colonial Art Museum of Havana in 1969.
