Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagás, Royal tobacco factory in Centro Habana, Cuba

The Real Fábrica de Tabacos Partagás is a cigar factory museum on Calle Industria 520 in central Havana, between Calle Barcelona and Calle Dragones, north of Parque de la Fraternidad Americana and across from the Capitolio. Its ornate neoclassical facade is maroon and cream; the original building, with a now-covered inner courtyard, gained an upper floor and a two-storey annex in the early 20th century and was restored in 2013.

A Spanish entrepreneur founded this factory in 1845, establishing it as one of Cuba's oldest tobacco operations. Following nationalization in 1960, the facility received a new official name and became part of the island's state-controlled economy.

The figure of the lector first appeared at Partagás: a reader paid to read novels aloud daily to the cigar rollers, a role the workers regarded as a social and cultural right. Readings of Cervantes, Dumas and Shakespeare were so familiar that cigars were named Sancho Panza, Montecristo and Romeo y Julieta. The essayist Ramiro de Maeztu worked as a reader in a Havana factory between 1891 and 1894; radio has since replaced the lector.

The former factory now serves as a museum visited on a guided tour that walks through rooms explaining leaf sorting and grading, rolling, pressing, filling and packing. Tickets are not sold at the museum itself; buy them at a nearby hotel, and book several days ahead because tour places are limited.

During the factory's early years, an exclusive cigar line was created specifically for King Farouk of Egypt. This connection to a foreign ruler demonstrates the international reach and prestige the factory commanded at that time.