It is not only music that is being rejuvenated in Old Havana, but dance as well, not the all-pervading salsa from whose strains it is virtually impossible to escape, but exciting modern dance which takes place throughout the streets and squares of the historical centre during the annual City in Movement Festival. This innovatory event, conceived and organised by the Office of the City Historian's Cultural Programming Department, involves dance groups from all over Cuba and the world interacting in a relay of movement which starts in the Plaza de Armas and ripples out in every direction, linked logistically by the built, so facilities must be provided for visitors, but only the kind of visitors who will respect and enjoy the area. All the hotels in the historical centre are housed in old buildings of exceptional historical and architectural interest and they are all charming. Perhaps the most charming of all is the Hotel Santa Isabel, housed in the Palace of the Counts of Santovenia on the Plaza de Armas. It has an incomparable view of the leafy Plaza de Armas and has been chosen by a glittering parade of dignitaries and their entourages, from film stars, socialites and supermodels to illustrious clergymen, important diplomatists and visiting heads of state.

The practical way in which the restoration of Old Havana is now being achieved is a join-the-dots theory whereby small groups of buildings are restored for a carefully considered mixture of end uses. Afterwards, the spaces between these areas are gradually transformed as the renaissance effect radiates outwards. An interesting case in point, currently in progress, is that of the corner of Teniente Rey and Compostela Streets, where the restoration of the exquisite neo-Gothic and neoclassical excesses of the Farmacia La Reunión is providing the focal pointfor a group of buildings including a school (this is already restored and opened), shops (principally the pharmacy, which sells herbs, spices, medicines and all sorts of pharmaceutical supplies and also houses a small museum), a bakery, a church (still open for worship, but in sore need of repair), a small hotel (in the potentially extremely pretty but currently ruined cloisters of the Convent of the Little Sisters of Santa Teresa) and above all, lots of housing, both for those already in need in the area and also the families who will move out of the Convent prior to its conversion to a hotel. All these families will be housed in spacious conversions of the old offices above the pharmacy, and in restored buildings nearby, in addition to an interesting new building project in the area.

In amongst the more earnest social aspects of the restoration project there are delicious doses of frivolity. Perhaps the mos popular of these to open in recent years is the Museo del Chocolate, where a small exhibition of chocolate-making equipment provides an excellent pretext for the sale of sinfully delectable hot and cold chocolate, and truffles made on the premises by graduates of the Cuban School of Master Chocolatiers, using cacao from the mountains of Baracoa.