November 27th, 2018. La Cabana fortress, Havana Harbour, Havana, Cuba. Cannons line the outer walls of the fortifications.

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Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña (Fort of Saint Charles), colloquially known as La Cabaña, is an 18th-century fortress complex, the third-largest in the Americas, located on the elevated eastern side of the harbor entrance in Havana, Cuba. After the capture of Havana by British forces in 1762, an exchange was soon made to return Havana to the Spanish, the controlling colonial power of Cuba, in exchange for Florida. A key factor in the British capture of Havana turned out to be the overland vulnerability of El Morro. This realization and the fear of further attacks following British colonial conquests in the Seven Years War prompted the Spanish to build a new fortress to improve the overland defense of Havana; King Carlos III of Spain began the construction of La Cabaña in 1763. Replacing earlier and less extensive fortifications next to the 16th-century El Morro fortress, La Cabaña was the second-largest colonial military installation in the New World by the time it was completed in 1774 (after the St. Felipe de Barajas fortification at Cartagena, Colombia), at great expense to Spain. Over the next two hundred years the fortress served as a base for both Spain and later independent Cuba – La Cabaña has been used as a prison by the government of Fidel Castro and his younger brother Raúl.

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Size: 6000px × 4000px
Photo credit: © M.J. Daviduik / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: cabañ, cannon, cannons, carlos, charles, complex, cuba, de, defense, fort, fortaleza, fortress, harbor, harbour, havana, la, military, prison, rampart, revolutionaries, saint, san, st., walls