Parque Histórico Abel Santamaría is located on the Avenida de Los Libertadores where it intersects with Calle Trinidad, in an area west of the Moncada barracks.

Museum: Monday - Saturday  09:00-17:00

Parque Histórico Abel Santamaría

Parque Histórico Abel Santamaría looks more like a small field than a park, consisting of the complex, composed of museum, library and monument, inaugurated on the ruins of old civil hospital Saturnino Lora (Complejo Histórico Monumental Parque-Museo-Biblioteca Abel Santamaría) in 1973.

The hospital, served as the military hospital (1856-1878), was a building of the neoclassical design. It was converted into civil hospital with the name of General Hospital in 1899. Later in 1921 the city council agreed to appoint it as Civil Hospital Saturnino Lora in honor of the great patriot of the Liberation Army. In the early 1960s a new hospital was built adjacent to the demolished hospital and was named Hospital Provincial Saturnino Lora.

The hospital has a special meaning in the memories of the Santiagueros, as it is a place that witnessed the brutal events of the assault on the Moncada barracks and the trial of Fidel Castro in 1953. It was seized by a group of the rebels, headed by Abel Santamaría Cuadrado, for its strategic position in relation to the Moncada barracks, especially to the Officers’ Club. After the rebels were driven back, all the rebels, captured by the soldiers in the civil hospital, were shot to death in the small-arms target range of the barracks within immediately two hours after the attack, and their corpses were strewn throughout the combat area, as if they were killed during the attack. Abel Santamaría’s eyes were gouged out, while his sister Haydée was forced to watch the procedure, and his corpse was also passed off, as if he was killed during the attack 2 days before.

The hospital is also the building where Fidel Castro was judged by the leading the assault on the Moncada barracks in a small study room reserved for the Nursing School. Here, he announced his claim in his self-defense, known as “la historia me absolverá / the history will absolve me”. In 1973 the museum & library complex was founded here due to these two historical events of great significance for Cuba. In 2000, the first Classroom-Museum was inaugurated in this museum, at the initiative of the city's historian Eusebio Leal Spengler to promote the study of history and museology in Cuban primary school children.

Historical events that took place here are the subject of the museum. They are exhibited in 7 separate rooms. The sixth room is where the idealist Doctor Mario Muñoz Monroy was detained when he was providing medical assistance to those wounded in the action. The last room is where Fidel Castro was tried for the Moncada event. The original furniture from the period when the trial was held, is preserved. Additionally, the authentic toga used by Fidel Castro when delivering his self-defense statement known as "History Will Absolve Me", is displayed in a showcase. Toga is a loose flowing outer garment worn by the citizens of ancient Rome, made of a single piece of cloth and covering the whole body apart from the right arm.

The most noteworthy feature of the park is the concrete monument in the shape of a gigantic cube that was placed in the center of the area and above a fountain (Cien Chorros). It has 4 faces with different reliefs: sphinx of Abel Santamaría Cuadrado; sphinx of José Martí; 6 bayonets of the army of tyranny, designating the judgment of the Army for justice; and a verse of the National Anthem “Morir por la patria es vivir / Dying for the homeland is living”. The water, gushing from the fountain below, is rather impressive and looks like, as if it supports the monument. It symbolizes the purity of ideals of the young generation of the centennial like the fountain Cien Chorros (Hundred Chorros), and the fusion of the ideals of the young people that had assaulted the Moncada barracks with the thought of José Martí on the centenary of his birth.

The monument was inaugurated in 1979. It is the work of René Valdés Cedeño. It was declared National Monument in 1998.