Mid-century concrete towers rise beside Republican-era mansions on a numbered grid that runs down to a seawall.
What Vedado looks like
A numbered and lettered grid of wide, tree-lined avenues covers Vedado, the blocks running about a hundred metres on a side. Calle 23, La Rampa, carries traffic from the inland blocks down toward the sea. It passes office towers and apartment blocks on its way to the .
Stone and stucco mansions from the early twentieth century sit beside concrete apartment towers from the 1950s. The rises between Calles 17 and 19, thirty nine floors of board-formed concrete. A slab block, it is ringed by open air corridors on every level. Smaller apartment houses nearby carry curved art deco balconies or cantilevered red and white decks, their paint weathered down to bare concrete in patches.
, a circular concrete pavilion under a folded roof, fills an entire block between Calles K and L. A few blocks inland, the 's main entrance is a wide stone staircase rising to a columned portico and the bronze Alma Mater statue.
The Malecón seawall forms the district's edge along the water, a straight concrete promenade with the set back on its own bluff above it. Vintage American cars are parked along most blocks, their paintwork flat and sun faded against the grey concrete of the towers behind them.
Shot in Vedado
Fresa y Chocolate used Coppelia as its characters' regular meeting spot in 1993, its outdoor tables and circular pavilion playing themselves on screen. The Fate of the Furious shot a car chase along the Malecón in 2017, with another scene inside the Hotel Nacional de Cuba a few blocks east.
Fresa y Chocolate, 1993
Coppelia
Diego and David meet regularly at Coppelia's outdoor tables through the film, the ice cream parlour becoming their recurring meeting point. The circular pavilion and its gardens still fill the whole block between Calles K and L. Street View
The Fate of the Furious, 2017
The Malecón
A car chase runs along the Malecón in Vedado, the seawall and the coast road doubling as themselves. The production also shot a scene inside the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, a few blocks east along the same stretch of coast. Street View
What Vedado can double for
Miraflores in Lima, Peru
Miraflores mixes early twentieth century mansions with mid-rise apartment towers along its own oceanfront Malecón, the closest match for Vedado's blend of eras. Both districts run a modern residential grid straight to a seawall above open water. Miraflores towers run taller and more glass fronted overall, so a street level frame away from the clifftop reads closer to Vedado's lower, wider blocks. Try searching oceanfront apartment towers now.
Art Deco Historic District in Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach's Art Deco and MiMo district has the same run of low glass and concrete towers from the 1930s through the 1950s, built at a similar height and set close to the water. No production has used Vedado for Miami that this research could confirm, so the match rests on the architecture alone. Miami's pastel paint schemes and denser palm landscaping would need matching or toning down on set to avoid giving the location away. Try searching low glass concrete towers now.
Copacabana's beachfront avenue carries the same mix of Art Deco and 1950s modernist apartment blocks as Vedado, with curved corners and balconies in a similar vocabulary. The avenue itself is a single curving beachfront strip rather than a numbered grid, a looser match away from the water. Copacabana's buildings run taller and closer together than Vedado's, so a wide shot needs a lower, less crowded block to hold the comparison. Try searching art deco apartment blocks now.
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