The Paseo de Martí is the first asphalt road in Havana. Each road at both sides of the walk has two lanes.

The Paseo de Martí that has a length of about one kilometer, is divided into four well-defined fundamental sections:

• The divided street with the promenade in the middle, extending from the Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta on the Malecón (Avenue del Puerto) south to the Neptuno street;

• the street along the west side of the Parque Central;

• the street on the east side of the Capitolio;

• the area around the Fuente de la India.

The first section, the boulevard with terrazzo pavement, is popular with its large-scale bronze lion statues that were erected in pairs at each end of the walk in 1929. The promenade is interrupted only by the Colón street; consequently, there are eight lion statues that seem to look after the promenade. The lion statues were made by smelting the obselete bronze cannons that had protected the city from pirates for centuries, by the French silversmith and sculptor Jean Elysée Puiforcat and the Cuban sculptor and bronze smelter Juan Comas in 1928.

Unlike the usual warren of narrow streets in Old Havana, this is a wide tree-lined boulevard, a shady area ideal for evening stroll. The walkway is bordered by an ornate wall with alcoves, containing marble benches, occupied by school children, loungers, roller skaters and debaters. It is also home to local artists and trinket sellers. An art fair is held on Sundays. At night the walkway is illuminated by gas lamps atop wrought-iron lampposts, decorated with griffin figures. Although there are not many shops to visit, you can find many bars and restaurants along both sides of the street. Many have outdoor upper balconies, giving fine views of the scene.

At the beginning of the promenade from the Malecón side close to the Parque de los Enamorados, there is the bronze statue of Juan Clemente Zenea (1832-1871), the Cuban nationalist poet that was shot for treason after eight months of imprisonment, because he had met Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the leader of the rebels that fought against the Spanish for the independence of Cuba. The life size statue is the work of the Spanish sculptor Ramón Mateu. It was sculpted at the request of the daughter of the poet and erected in 1920. Zenea is represented as sitting with a pen in his right hand and a notebook in his left, while the marble relief of a naked woman with a lyre in her hand that represents the Greek poet Sappho, is sculpted beside the poet. On the back of the monument the title of one of his poems is engraved: “a una golondrina (to a swallow)”.

The promenade section of the Paseo de Martí is enriched by recreation areas nearby like the Parque de los Enamorados, spaces for leisure like the Taetro Fausto on the Colón street, and old ornate buildings like the Palacio de Matrimonios, as well as historical hotels like the Hotel Sevilla on the Trocadero street.

On the other end of the promenade before the Central Park, there is the marble bust of Manuel de la Cruz (1861-1896), the Cuban journalist and writer, with the bas-reliefs of Sappho on each side of the pedestal.