The Capri Hotel, the first hotel-and-casino built by mobsters in Havana

MIAMI, United States. – Havana’s Capri Hotel was inaugurated on November 27^th, 1957. It is one of the most representative hotels in the capital.

The Capri was the result of an investment opening process started in 1955 by dictator Fulgencio Batista, who promulgated Hotel Law 2074 that year.

This was a measure that offered tax incentives, government loans and casino licenses to anyone who wished to build hotels in Havana valued at US$ 1 million or more, and nightclubs valued at US$ 200,000.

The law brought notorious mobster Meyer Lansky and several of his partners to Cuba; they started to fill the city with hotels and casinos.

In that sense, the Capri was one of the first hotels to be constructed in Havana that was owned by mobsters, for the Capri specifically the American Santo Trafficante Jr., who ceded the management of the hotel to Nicholas Di Costanzo, the mobster Charles Turin and Santino Masselli.

Originally, the hotel had nineteen floors and 250 guest rooms, which made it one of the largest hotel-and-casinos in the Cuban capital.

The Capri Hotel was nationalized by the regime of Fidel Castro in October 1960 and the casino was shut down by his own orders.

The hotel came to be known as the Horizontes Capri Hotel in the 1990s.

The facility closed in 2003 and reopened in January 2014 following important restorations; the Spanish hotel group NH took over its management.

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Fuente Cubanet.org