5 Pesos Trinidad Main Parish Church

Trinidad, founded in 1514, was among the earliest Spanish settlements in Cuba and grew wealthy on sugar and the slave trade before the industry collapsed in the late nineteenth century. That stagnation left the city architecturally frozen — which is precisely why UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site in 1988, one year after this coin was issued. The Banco Nacional's commemorative program in the late 1980s frequently anticipated or accompanied such designations, functioning as much as diplomatic currency as collectible issue.