The north main entrance is marked by a gateway decorated with biblical reliefs and topped by a marble sculpture by José Vilalta Saavedra: Faith, Hope and Charity.

The Monumento a los Bomberos (Firemen's Monument) built by Spanish sculptor Agustín Querol and architect Julio M Zapata, commemorates the twenty eight firemen who died when a hardware shop in La Habana Vieja caught fire in 1890 In front of the main entrance, at the axes of the principal avenues Avenida Cristobal Colón, Obispo Espada, and Obispo Fray Jacinto, stands the Central Chapel modelled on Il Duomo in Florence is the octagonal Capilla Central (central chapel), the Capilla del Amor (Chapel of Love), built by Juan Pedro Baró for his wife Catalina Laza.

With more than 800,000 graves and 1 million interments, space in the Colon Cemetery is currently at a premium and as such after three years remains are removed from their tombs, boxed and placed in a storage building.

Rectangular in shape as a Roman-Byzantine-style Roman camp, with sidewalks, streets and listed roads, facilitating access to the visitor, (which in republican times was provided with a free map).

Enrique Martínez y Martínez tells us in «Cuba Arquitectura y Urbanismo»: “It was the most remarkable religious construction that was made in the city during the nineteenth century”.The square located on the central street between the chapel and the huge doorway was called Christopher Columbus, because it was planned to erect a monument to the Discoverer next to the remains, which ironically never happened of the Cathedral of Havana, being the first bust erected throughout the continent (1828) and the only one that exists in the whole world with a beard.

Designed by the Galician architect Calixto Arellano de Loira y Cardoso, a graduate of Madrid's Royal Academy of Arts of San Fernando, who became the Colón's first resident when he died and before his work was completed.

The two main avenues give rise to the central cross, each of the four resulting spaces, called barracks, is subdivided in turn by two other streets that intersect at right angles.

Five squares are formed at the intersections, the main one of which is the Central Chapel, with an octagonal floor plan and surrounded by portals, a Loire project completed with modifications by Francisco Marcotegui.

The remains of the casualties are located in the mausoleum of the Anglo-American Welfare Association, with the names inscribed on the central memorial which also forms the entrance to the underground ossuary.