Housed in the Palacio de Junco, a handsome neoclassical building from the 1830s on the Plaza de la Vigía, the provincial museum covers Matanzas's history from the colonial period through the Republic. The collections include exhibits on the sugar economy, the slave trade, the Ten Years War, and the development of Afro-Cuban religious traditions. The building itself — pale pink, colonnaded, overlooking the square — is one of the finest examples of Cuban colonial civil architecture in the country.
The museum is small enough to cover in an hour and well enough arranged to repay the effort. The plaza outside connects to the Teatro Sauto directly, making the two an easy afternoon pairing.