The Calzada del Cerro is one of Havana's most architecturally significant streets — a long avenue lined continuously with 19th-century neoclassical mansions whose ground floors open onto covered arcades (portales). In their heyday these portales sheltered pedestrians from tropical rains; today they shelter residents sitting outside in the evenings and informal trade.
The scale and consistency of the arcade streetscape is extraordinary — this is one of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century Caribbean urban architecture in existence, largely because it is too poor and too structurally complex to demolish or renovate quickly. Walking the full length of the Calzada takes about 30 minutes and gives a compressed history of a city in transition.