One of the buildings that represents the importance of the city in the political sense is the National Capitol building, El Capitolio. Until the Cuban Revolution, El Capitolio was the house of the Cuban Congress, after which it became the headquarters of the Cuban Academy Sciences. The construction of El Capitolio began in 1926, the Cuban governments between 1898 and 1959 were, to an extent, backed and influenced by the U.S. and as such, a figure of western neoclassical architecture. The revolutionaries tried to remove all aspects of American influence in Cuba, which included changing the structure of the government by disbanding the Congress and changing El Capitolio’s primary purpose.
