The monument identified as "El Templete" was built in 1828 at the site that supposedly held the first mass and the first council held in Havana in 1519.
Work of the engineer Antonio María de la Torre, the monument is surrounded by a small garden.
It takes the form of a unique Doric temple that houses three monumental canvases due to the brush of the French painter Juan Bautista Vermay. "El Templete" is located at the bottom of the ring and at the end of the east side in the Plaza de Armas.
It measures twelve rods in front and eight and a half on both sides and eleven high.
It is composed of an architrave with six columns of Doric capitals and attic plinths, and four pilasters on the sides, with other ornaments.
The pavement is white marble. Within the enclosure closed by the gates that surround "The Temple" are also located a marble bust of Christopher Columbus, a ceiba and Cajigal column, named for being the name of the governor who ordered it to be built in 1754 when it disappeared the ceiba that marked the place where the town of San Cristóbal de La Habana was founded.