The mural painting View of Havana in 1852, by the Spanish artist Hipólito Hidalgo de Caviedes, is one of the most important heritage works preserved in the city and an excellent gateway to the history of Cuba's largest city.

This pictorial work can be contemplated in Amargura Street and is a project personally conceived by the Havana City Historian, Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler.

With a beautiful panoramic view of the former Villa de San Cristóbal de La Habana, the piece captures the viewer's gaze and shows the bay, the Casablanca grounds and the construction of the fortress of San Carlos de La Cabaña.

The artist took as a reference for his piece an engraving made by Eduardo Laplante in 1852, which can be seen in the "Libro de los ingenios".

This mural was previously located in the La Metropolitana building and had to be relocated when it was converted into a hotel.

For such an undertaking, a group of specialists from the Office of the Historian of Havana had to carry out the great feat of dismantling it, moving it, protecting it and placing it in a new space.

According to the experts, this has been one of the most important challenges taken on by the office, as it is a work of great dimensions and the handling was very complex.

However, these challenges were overcome and the objective was more than achieved in a work that is considered to have a degree of protection of one, due to its high historical and heritage value.

The mural was able to regain its shine and prestige, thanks to the efforts of a multidisciplinary group from the Plaza Vieja Investment Department, who placed it in an innovative room that provides information related to the painter and the work, through technological resources such as Wi-Fi, infographics and a graphic that -through the use of augmented reality- helps to appreciate all the details.

It is necessary to underline the value of augmented reality and the easy access to it, as through the Wi-Fi the public can load the application on their mobile phones and enjoy the entire exhibition, as well as the process of moving and restoring the mural.

In front of this pictorial work, the visitor can sit and admire the city from a very comfortable space, but it also allows him to be in a place where he drinks from history, the biographical data of the painter and ten other murals painted by the Iberian artist in Havana and even in residential buildings, where Hipólito Hidalgo Caviedes left his mark at the beginning of the 20th century.

In the beautiful work Vista de La Habana en 1852, by the Spanish artist Hipólito Hidalgo de Caviedes, is reflected a part of the history of this mythical city told through pictorial talent and which is a delight for Cuban and foreign passers-by.

The outstanding Spanish painter Hipólito Hidalgo de Caviedes y Gómez lived in Cuba for many years and a good part of his murals are treasured in this Caribbean nation.

He was born in 1902 in the city of Madrid and from an early age showed a vocation for the arts, skills he developed with his father, the painter Rafael Hidalgo de Caviedes.

He studied painting at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid with Aurelio Arteta and Julio Romero de Torres.

In the 1920s he collaborated as an illustrator in magazines such as Blanco y Negro, Mundo Gráfico and La Esfera, while making copies of El Greco at the Museo del Prado.

He was a member of the group of Iberian Artists and, as such, was granted a pension by the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios to go to Italy and Germany, studying mural painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and at the United State School for the Free and Applied Arts in Berlin.

On his return he settled in Madrid, where he painted murals such as the one in the central hall of the Telefónica Building in 1930, the one in the Centder for Studies and Permanent Information on Construction in 1934 and the one in the Capitol bar in the same year. In 1936 he traveled to Rome to paint the murals for the Spanish Pavilion at the World Catholic Press Exhibition at the Vatican.

His stay in Spain was brief, as in 1937 he had to leave in exile and took up residence in Havana, where he specialized in mural painting, leaving much of his work in Cuba, the United States and Puerto Rico, where he was appointed director of the Diocesan Museum. The International Exhibition of Modern Painting at the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh awarded him First Prize in 1935 for his work Elvira and Tiberius.

In Cuba, he took part in group exhibitions in Havana, all with great success; in this city, he married and settled down.

He executed many mural paintings in the Cuban capital, including the Banco Pedroso, the Hotel Internacional de Varadero and the old building of the Diario de la Marina, now Editora Abril. One of his most outstanding works in Havana, before returning to Spain in 1961, is the large fresco that decorates the triumphal arch of the chapel of Belén. 

In 1970 he was appointed member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. His speech was on El pintor ante el muro ("The painter before the wall"), as it was on mural painting that he worked most throughout his artistic career.