When the Cuban revolution took place, many Cuban landowners had to emigrate because the government confiscated their properties. One of these people was the Countess of Revilla de Camargo, María Luisa Gómez-Mena, a wealthy lady who owns sugar mills.
The palace of the Countess of Revilla de Camargo was built with great luxury at the beginning of the XNUMXth century and after being expropriated it was converted into a Museum of Decorative Arts. That is why we can enter and enjoy the luxuries that were once the exclusive preserve of this rich lady.
The Museum of Decorative Arts of Havana is on 17th and E streets, in the Vedado area. The Countess knew how to receive at the time the Dukes of Windsor, the English king who abdicated and his North American wife, the Duchess of Alba, the Counts of Barcelona, among other illustrious guests. The palace has eleven rooms and forty doors in total and is luxuriously decorated. Before being turned into a museum, many valuable decorative works of art were found behind a bricked-up wall in the basement: five XNUMXth-century French Romantic paintings.
The truth is that after the revolution the countess went into exile and died in Spain in 1965. The house was left in the hands of the government and so was its interior. Today it houses 33 thousand works of art and there are pieces from the time of the Louis and Napoleon III, English porcelain and French manufactures. There are twelve showrooms: the Dining room with clocks and sculptures, the Neoclassical living room with secretary which was of Marie Antoinette, the Boudoir room with pieces of French goldwork from the XNUMXth century, the Lobby with its Italian marbles, the Hall of the Eastern Screens, with Chinese partitions from the XNUMXth, XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, the Oriental room with a beautiful Persian rug, the Sevres Room, English Lounge and Eclectic Lounge, with temporary exhibitions.
The Palace of the Countess of Revilla Camargo It has three bathrooms but only one is on display and it is the one in the main room, a bathroom inlaid with French porcelain, Italian crystals and a lot of marble.