Famed Havana 'Mob' Hotel Reopens After Renovation Peter Orsi - The Associated Press
go to original February 15, 2014

The hotel Capri is illuminated at dawn in Havana, Cuba, Friday, Feb. 14, 2014. (Franklin Reyes/Associated Press)

HAVANA — In its heyday, Havana's Capri hotel and casino was the playground of men known as The Blade and The Fat Butcher.

It was also a pleasure garden for headline stars who portrayed Mafiosi on the silver screen: George Raft, known for hoodlum roles such as Guino Rinaldo in 1932's "Scarface," was the casino's celebrity "greeter" and made his home in the 19th-floor penthouse.

Havana's hedonistic mob-and-movie-star days came to an end with Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, and the hotel drifted into a long, slow decline. But now the Capri is back in business after being closed more than a decade ago. Its rebirth is part of Cuba's latest bid to trade on its colorful pre-Communist past and attract tourist dollars to fund its socialist present.

"It's a feeling of that era (at the Capri). I think in Cuba you feel that in general," said Roberto Escalante, a 62-year-old Mexican university professor who was staying in the hotel this month during an academic conference. "It's very comfortable. It's missing some services still, but yes, you feel like you're back in those times — which were good!"

Indeed, details such as the Capri's polished, art-deco granite floors with their flowery bronze inlays fit right into a city that still teems with finned Chevrolet and Cadillac classics. So do the graceful copper-colored lobby chandeliers, which like the floors are restored originals.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post

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