In these grounds is situated the famous Tacon Theatre. In visiting the house, you enter the first tier and parquette from the level of the Paseo, and find the interior about twice as large as any theatre in this country, and about equal in capacity to Tripler Hall, New York, or the Music Hall, Boston. It has five tiers of boxes, and a parquette with seats, each separate, like an arm-chair, for six hundred persons. The lattice-work in front of each box is light and graceful, of gilt ornament, and so open that the dresses and pretty feet of the señoras are seen to the best advantage. The decorations are costly, and the frescoes and side ornaments of the proscenium exceedingly beautiful. A magnificent cut-glass chandelier, lighted with gas, and numerous smaller ones extending from the boxes, give a brilliant light to this elegant house. At the theatre the military are always in attendance in strong force, as at all gatherings in Cuba, however unimportant, their only perceptible use, however, being to impede the passages, and stare the ladies out of countenance. The only other noted place of amusement is the Italian opera-house, within the city walls, an oven-shaped building externally, but within appropriately and elegantly furnished with every necessary appurtenance.
No object in Havana will strike the visitor with more of interest than the cathedral, situated in the Calle de Ignacio. Its towers and pillared front of defaced and moss-grown stone call back associations of centuries gone by. This cathedral, like all of the Catholic churches, is elaborately ornamented with many fine old paintings of large size and immense value. The entire dome is also decorated with paintings in fresco. The chief object of interest, however, and which will not fail to attract the attention, is a tablet of marble inlaid in the wall at the right of the altar, having upon its face the image of Christopher Columbus, and forming the entrance to the tomb where rest the ashes of this discoverer of a western world; here, too, are the iron chains with which an ungrateful sovereign once loaded him. How great the contrast presented to the mind between those chains and the reverence bestowed upon this tomb![23]