Jagua Castle, locally known as Castillo de Jagua, is situated on a hill at the entrance of the bay of Cienfuegos, in the little village of Jagua on Cuba. Its full name is Castillo Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Jagua. Castle was built between 1733 and 1745 by the French military engineer Don Jose Tantete Duvillier, on orders of the Spanish crown, on foundations that are thought to have been built in 1729 by another engineer; Don Bruno Caballero y Elvira. The fort had to protect the bay against pirates that used to land there before the town of Cienfuegos was settled in 1819. Upon completion, Jagua Castle was the 3rd most important fort on Cuba, after the El Morro Castle in Havana and the El Morro Castle in Santiago de Cuba.
In 1976, Communist companions Cuba and the Soviet Union signed a deal to build a nuclear power plant in Juraqua. Construction on the first of two nuclear reactors began in 1983 with a target operational date of 1993. But a few years before the reactor's scheduled completion, the USSR collapsed. The flow of crucial Soviet funds ceased, 300 Russian technicians went home, and Cuba was forced to suspend construction on its badly needed power plant.
Lacking nuclear fuel and without the primary components installed, the plant sat in limbo until December 2000, when Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to Cuba. Putin offered Fidel Castro a belated $800 million to finish the first reactor. Despite Cuba's reliance on imported oil for power, Castro declined. Project status: officially abandoned.
Today the unfinished plant, a huge, domed concrete structure, sits on the Caribbean coast, across the bay from the city of Cienfuegos.
The Jardín Botánico de Cienfuegos ( Cienfuegos Botanical Gardens ) are located in the outskirts of the city of Cienfuegos and are comprised of 97 hectares of land. There, you will find a marvelous tropical and subtropical garden with more than 2,000 catalogued species. It's definitely worth visiting the bamboo plantations , containing more than 23 different species; its section of cacti, with over 200 different species ; and the palm tree plantations, with around 280 varieties of plants from the local Palmera Real to the exotic Palmera Alcornoque .