Havana  - On a clear day, something frequent in Havana, it does not take much imagination to understand what drew US writer Ernest Hemingway to Finca Vigia for 21 years of refuge on the outskirts of the Cuban capital.

The house's privileged location on a hilltop, with great views over Havana Bay, keeps it unusually cool for the Caribbean climate.

One can easily visualize Hemingway relaxing, with one of his famous rum drinks, in the spacious living room, surrounded by records and books after a day's writing. He stood at his typewriter in the study to work.

It was there that he heard of his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, in the house, as he described it, "where morning is cool and fresh on the hottest day in summer."

Almost 50 years after the author's death by suicide, little has changed in Finca Vigia. You almost expect the writer of For Whom the Bell Tolls to appear in a doorway, or to hear his voice demanding more drink from the pool - the same one that saw noteworthy scenes, like the swim of completely-naked dark-haired beauty Ava Gadner during one of her visits.

"The house holds the spirit of Hemingway's life," says Ada Rosa Alfonso, the head of the writer's house-museum.

Since Hemingway's fourth and last wife, Mary Welsh, donated it to the Cuban state after the author's death in 1961, "Cuba has respected the will to preserve it as if it were his house," Alfonso notes.

Nothing is under glass, almost everything is original. The ancient living-room radio still works, "with its original mechanism."

Hunting trophies, typewriters, clothes - even his World War II uniform, - all is at Finca Vigia, drawing tourists every day.

In archives - out of bounds for visitors - Finca Vigia keeps another secret: thousands of documents left behind by the author when he died.

In December, the museum announced the digitalization of the first part of its archive - more than 3,000 pages of letters, bills, notes and other writings which, according to Alfonso, allow "a deeper understanding of Hemingway's life and his works, of his concept and philosophy of things, of his exchanges with writers, editors, artists ... like his relationship with John Dos Passos or Gertrude Stein."

Visitors, including reporters, have no access to originals, but the computerized catalogue shows letters from children requesting help with coursework, as well as more revealing ones from actresses like Ingrid Bergman. Afonso notes a Hemingway passport with a visa for a previously unknown African trip.

The efforts to preserve, restore and digitalize the material emerged from cooperation between the communist Caribbean island and its longtime enemy, the United States, thanks to a bilateral deal signed in November 2002 by the US Social Science Research Council and Cuba's National Cultural Heritage Council.

The agreement, signed in the presence of then-president Fidel Castro and US Democratic Congressman James McGovern of Massachusetts, provided for the US institution to supply materials and specialists to Cuba. In return, the John F Kennedy presidential library in Boston earlier this year received the digital material.

The material, which includes archival replicas, includes corrected proofs of The Old Man and the Sea and an alternate ending to For Whom the Bell Tolls, a Boston newspaper reported.

McGovern cited Hemingway's case as a "bridge" to move towards a "more rational and mature" relationship between the two countries. In fact, Hemingway himself "bridged" time on the island from the Batista regime to the installation of Fidel Castro as rebel leader in 1959.

Hemingway is not known to have directly expressed his opinion of the socialist takeover. But Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez has quoted the US author as saying in Spanish: "We, the Cubans, we are going to win," and adding in English: "I'm not a Yankee, you know."

A lot of the material still remains to be digitalized, including an extraordinary number of maps - "you could almost make a Hemingway travel book with the maps!" Alfonso notes - and almost 2,000 books, magazines and leaflets with notes on the margins by the writer,

Indeed, Finca Vigia was the real home of Hemingway the traveller, Alfonso said.

"The importance of Finca Vigia in Hemingway's life and works is a fact that people always try to hide. I will not go into the reasons," she notes.

"This is where he finished writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, Across the River and Into the Trees, here he wrote Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, A Moveable Feast, True at First Light ... a great portion of his work, chronicles, features he wrote here. At the end of the day, it is 21 years of his life, the most productive stage," she says.

"Hemingway is also a part of the Cuban heritage," Alfonso stressed proudly. (dpa)