Grand National Masonic Temple

Grand National Masonic Temple, the eleven storey building crowned by the Square and Compass, located at number 508 Avenida Salvador Allende in Havana as a source of pride.

When it first opened in 1955, was one of the most modern buidings in Cuba. And it remains the best maintained, as witnessed today the small blue leather couches or columns topped by luminous globes. Here's where collective rites occur. It is here, within these walls, with its medals and swords, that the Grand Master and Grand Secretary retain their offices. There is also a museum, a library open to the public and an asylum that houses elderly Masons and administers donations - especially drugs - provided by American and European lodges.

Underground lies the dark "chamber of reflection" on it, along with skeletons and other symbols of vanitas (vanity) human, the aspirant begins to start their learning, "dies" and then is reborn to a new life within the community. A symbolic ritual that, in the country of African diasporic religious traditions, the syncretic traditions that unite African and Christian elements, was enriched with even more macabre passages.