Ernest Hemingway called Cuba home from 1939 to 1960. Finca La Vigía, his house in San Francisco de Paula, is where the guayabera-loving author wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, A Movable Feast, and four more books. It wasn’t until 2007 that his house became open to the public. The Cuban government took ownership of the house after his death in 1961, but when he was alive, the U.S. ambassador to Cuba suggested that Ernest give up his home. He refused to give it up, despite tense relations between the U.S. and Cuba, according to Valerie Hemingway in a piece for Smithsonian Magazine. Before El Papa brought the two countries together, it was Ernest who managed to get Cuba and the U.S. to collaborate to restore his house.
Today would have been his 116th birthday, so we rounded up pictures of what is now known as the Museo Ernest Hemingway, which looks exactly as Ernest left it in 1960.
