The city was founded by Diego Vel�zquez de Cu�llar in 1514. Francisco Iznaga, a rich Basque landowner in the western portion of Cuba during the first thirty years of the colonization of Cuba, was elected mayor of Bayamo in 1540. Iznaga was the originator of a powerful lineage that finally settled in Sancti Spiritus and Trinidad where Torre Iznaga is. Iznaga's descendants fought for the Independence of Cuba and the Annexation to the US from 1820 to 1900.
The Parroquial Mayor is located two blocks south of the town's main square; it is a venerable green-towered church whose early 16th-century origins make it the country's oldest. Nearby is the Museo de Arte Colonial (Colonial Art Museum), one of Sancti Sp�ritus's most splendid colonial homes and a standout attraction. The opulent former palatial mansion of the Valle Iznaga clan, one of Cuba's most elite families who fled Cuba after Fidel's Revolution, it became the property of the state in 1961. Ninety percent of what you see inside, from furniture to paintings, is original. Though the family obviously kept an impressive collection of Limoges porcelain, French gilded mirrors, Italian marble tables, and Baccarat crystal chandeliers here, it wasn't their primary residence; the house was used mostly to host family members in transit, so the furnishings were rather eclectic. The three bedrooms are decorated in grand style, though, with handmade lace, embroidered sheets, and hand-painted glass. There is a gorgeous and very Cuban leather sill�n fumador (smoking chair) and, in the music room, the mid-18th-century American piano, one of only two of its type in Cuba. In the tearoom is the family seal, which says a lot about the arrogance of the rich and powerful: "El que m�s vale no vale tanto como Valle vale" ("He who has the greatest worth isn't worth as much as a Valle is worth" -- playing off the Spanish word for "worth" with the family surname).
Another interesting landmark is one of Cuba's older bridges
