The main campus of the University of Havana, the largest., oldest, and leading academic institution in Cuba, is in Vedado.

HISTORY

In the first half of the 18th century the Dominican friar that were concerned in the education system of the island, requested for the permission to start with the studies in their convent. At that time, children of wealthy families had to go Mexico, Santa Domingo or Spain to receive education. In 1721, the Dominican friars obtained the approval of founding an university in their convent, Convento de San Juan de Letrán, also known as Convento de Santa Domingo, by the bull issued by Pope Innocent XIII. Counts of Bayona had great support in this event.

In 1728 King Philip V of Bourbon confirmed by a Royal Decree the establishment of the Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo de La Habana in the renovated convent. This was the first university in Cuba and one of the first universities founded in the Americas. This date is accepted as the date of the establishment of the modern University of Havana today. The university was providing training for theology, philosophy, canons, law, art and medicine at that time.

Except the short period in 1762 in that the invading British army used the building as barracks, many children of wealthy families received education in the fields of laws, medicine, mathematics, grammar, theology and philosophy, attending the five faculties of the university until 1841. The prominent personalities of Cuban thought, science and culture that studied in this university are Felix Varela, Manuel de Céspedes, Francisco Vicente Aguilera, Ignacio Agramonte, Francisco de Arango y Parreňo, Tomás Romay, José Augustín Caballero, Antonio Bachiller y Morales, José María Heredia, Rafael María de Mendive, José Antonio Saco and Cirilo Villaverde.

In the course of time, the Dominicans lost their power, and finally also the possession of their property, so that they could not continue with the education that was their main activity as tutors. In 1841 their building passed into the hands of the state, and when the administration of the university was undertaken by the Spanish government, after a process of reforms the university was called Universidad Real y Literaria de La Habana in 1842. It was no longer a religious institution and changed its status to become a secular, royal and literary institution.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the university increased its scientific level by adding new faculties. The university graduated the first woman, Mercedes Riba, in 1885. Upon the end of the Spanish rule on the island in 1898, the administration of the university changed hands, so that the most modern teaching methods were initiated. However, the structural condition of the university building in the Convento de San Juan de Letrán was inappropriate. In 1902, the American military government on the island ordered the transfer of some faculties of the university to some buildings on the Hill Aróstegui in Vedado (also known as Loma polytechnics), where it still stays. At the beginning of the republican life, the first buildings on the hill began to be built and the existing ones were adapted to the academic purposes of the university that had received the name of University of Havana.

The founding of the Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (University Student Federation) in 1922 and the inauguration of the staircase in front of the university building in 1928, even though some of the buildings of the university were pending to be constructed, are some of the events that should be mentioned in the first half of the 20th century. In 1956, when the anti-government protests increased in the university, the President Fulgencio Batista closed the university. After the revolution in 1959, the doors of the Havana University were reopened and the education system in the university was reorganized by a set of transformations according the university reform in 1962.