- Title: CUBA: GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBOURG MARIA TERESA VISITS HER OLD HOME IN HAVANA
- Date: 2nd April 2002
- Summary: HAVANA, CUBA (APRIL 2, 2002) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CARS ARRIVING AT THE HOUSE OF THE GREAT DUCHESS (2 SHOTS) PAN UP OF STREET SIGNS WHERE THE HOUSE IS LOCATED FRONT VIEW OF THE HOUSE, TODAY QATAR'S AMBASSADOR'S RESIDENCE CU VIEW OF THE NUMBER OF THE HOUSE WHERE SHE WAS BORN, NOW THE RUSSIAN TRADE DELEGATION GENERAL VIEW OF THE HOUSE WHERE SHE WAS BORN WIDE VIEW OF THE PLAZA DE ARMAS SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE HOTEL WHERE SHE STAYS GENERAL VIEW OF SANTA ISABEL HOTEL VARIOUS: GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBOURG MARIA TERESA CHATTING WITH OTHER PEOPLE GENERAL VIEW OF HAVANA STREET WITH PEOPLE WALKING LV: THE DUCHESS WALKS TOWARDS AND ENTERS HOTEL
- Embargoed: 17th April 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HAVANA, CUBA
- Country: Cuba
- Topics: General,People,Royalty
- Reuters ID: LVA2OB3FACH0WZ4Q87LGUVO8NZ4D
- Story Text: Drawn by her children's curiosity and her Cuban roots, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, Maria Teresa, has visited her old home in Havana that she abandoned a few months after President Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.
Luxembourg's Cuban-born grand duchess, Maria Teresa, returned to her roots on Tuesday (April 02) for the first time with a visit to the Havana home her family abandoned months after President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
She has been in the Caribbean island since the end of last week with two of her five children on "a strictly private, family visit," according to diplomats and her Cuban hosts.
The mansion she briefly visited on Tuesday was built in 1958 by her parents, Jose Antonio Mestre Alvarez-Tabio and Maria Teresa Batista y Falla, at the former country club in an exclusive part of Cuba's coastal capital. It is rented by the Embassy of Qatar from the Cuban state.
Born in 1956, Maria Teresa first went with her family to New York in October 1959 as part of an exodus of rich Cubans in the early days of Castro's revolution, which he was to declare communist in 1961.
Then she moved to Spain and finally to Switzerland where she met then-Crown Prince Henri at Geneva University.
The Cuban married into the tiny European nation's royalty in 1981, and Henri became Luxembourg's monarch, grand duke, in 2000, when his father abdicated.
The grand duchess, who maintains her family roots by cooking Cuban food and playing local guitar music to her children, was staying at the colonial-era Santa Isabel hotel in Old Havana, but was avoiding foreign media, diplomatic and Cuban sources said. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
