The Francisco Donatien Cigar Factory offers a more intimate visit than some of the major Havana cigar factories. Nowadays, the authentic cigars are made, through manual procedures with some centuries of tradition. In a long, high-ceilinged hall, mostly young men—sporting trendy, shaved hair-dos—sit at old-fashioned, wooden tables, carefully destemming aged tobacco leaves, which look like thin strips of leather, then slowly rolling layers of different tobacco. You can watch a Montecristo in the making, as a guide explains the process. This factory is one of the emblematic buildings of the XIX century's architecture in Pinar del Río. In the entrance of this building, there is a shop in which the visitor may buy a great variety of cigar bands of the most known brands.

Installed in a fantastical Moorish palace, dripping with carved stone griffins, this museum is even more fascinating for its outlandish architecture and quaint, old-fashioned displays than for its hodgepodge, natural history collection. The delightful surprise here is the interior garden where, amid Art Nouveau painted floor tiles, intricately carved wooden doors and tropical plants, a giant concrete model of a demonically grinning tyrannosaurus Rex reigns. The exhibits include dusty dioramas of desiccated stuffed specimens, from antelope to zebra, plus an array of mounted animal heads on the walls. There's a room dedicated to butterfly and moth collections, and a shell collection is displayed in showcases held up by carved seahorses.

On a narrow side street south of the city center, this small distillery occupies a former rum factory. This factory produce a very popular local beverage, the Guayabita del Pinar, which has received several awards in Cuba and abroad in some of the most important. Just about every process is done by hand, from pouring the tiny guayabita berries into huge, wooden fermenting barrels, to bottle washing, to tapping corks into the bottles, to affixing the old-fashioned labels. Visitors can taste the finished product in the shop.

Just outside town, this Afro-Cuban restaurant and nightclub puts on a cabaret show on an outdoor stage with dancers plus singers. The restaurant is famed for its pollo ahumado (smoked chicken). The bar and cabaret are the city's top nightspots.