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Officials in Cuba are working to restore the home and possessions of American writer Ernest Hemmingway.

It is hoped that by sprucing up the building which sits atop a hill in Havana, Cuba will see more tourists visiting the capital city, reports the Peninsula.

Staff have been working around the clock to scrub the house, clean the pool, weed the garden and ensure that his remaining possessions are in tip top shape.

'It's a process that requires dedication and time,' said Ada Rosa Alfonso, director of Finca Vigia, the Spanish colonial house-turned-museum where Hemmingway lived. 'I predict (a finish date) perhaps at the end of 2009.'

Hemmingway's widow handed the property over to the Cuban government after her husband committed suicide in 1961.

The house contains a number of rum bottles, a pickled bat in a jar and, most importantly, the type writer on which the great man wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

Work to renovate the house began in 2005 after the US National Trust for Historic Preservation put it on a list of endangered sites.

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