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The Basílica Menor de San Francisco de Asís, which stands in the Plaza de San Francisco, was originally the church attached to a monastery from which all Franciscan missionary activity on the South American continent was coordinated. In 1762 it was seized by the British invaders for Protestant worship, and after being deconsecrated was used for customs warehousing, as a post office and finally as a cold store. It lost its noble dome and crossing during a hurricane in the mid nineteenth century, and it was a sad structure to which the Office of the City Historian turned its energetically benevolent attentions.
After an exceedingly painstaking restoration during which a massive concrete cold store had to be removed from the nave of the church, the Basilica Menor was reopened as Old Havana's largest concert hall. Its acoustics are superb, it is air conditioned throughout, and now audiences attending the excellent Saturday night concerts of chamber music, choral concerts and piano recitals can ponder the elegant asceticism of the building whilst listening to distinguished classical musicians from Cuba and abroad. The Basilica is closely linked with the Iglesia de San Francisco de Paula, which stands at the end of the Alameda de Paula, overlooking the harbour. The Alameda used to be Havana's principal promenade ground and it is Eusebio Leal's intention to return it to its bygone beauties, removing the unsightly remains of old wharves which lie before it and restoring its decorative wrought iron and classical statuary. The church is the chosen rehearsal space of Ars Longa, the Office of the City Historian's ancient music group, and it is from there that they coordinate Havana's annual Early Music Festival.
To these two concert halls has recently been added the Iglesia de San Felipe Neri, a beautiful seventeenth-century oratory which was converted to banking premises in the 1920s. Architecturally it is a rather curious combination of soaring ecclesiastical spaces with distinctly earthbound bankerly detailing, but it works beautifully as a venue for song recitals and lyric theatre. Its large wooden stage is floated over the original altar area, under which archaeologists discovered the foundation stone of the building together with a handful of silver and gold coins, which are now on display in a glass case to one side of the stage according to an old custom
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