St George’s travel guide

St George’s is one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful harbour cities. The town stands on an almost landlocked sparkling blue harbour against a background of green and hazy blue hills, with its terraces of pale, colour-washed houses and cheerful red roofs. The capital was established in 1705 by French settlers, and much of its charm comes from the blend of two colonial cultures: typical 18th-century French provincial houses intermingle with fine examples of English Georgian architecture. Unlike many Caribbean ports, which are built around bays on coastal plains, St George’s straddles a promontory. It has steep hills with long flights of steps and sharp bends, with police on point duty to prevent chaos at the blind junctions. At every turn is a different view or angle of the town, the harbour or the coast.

The Carenage runs around the inner harbour, connected with the Esplanade on the seaward side of Fort George Point by the Sendall Tunnel, built in 1895. There is always plenty of dockside activity on the Carenage, with goods being unloaded from wooden schooners. Cruise ships now come in to a new deep water cruise ship port on the Esplanade on the western side of the city,while the ferries and hovercraft from Carriacou and Petite Martinique still dock in the middle of the Carenage. Restaurants, bars and shops line the Carenage. The harbour is the crater of an old volcano. In 1867 the water in the lagoon started to boil and the air stank of sulphur. The water level in the harbour has risen about 5 ft above sea level on three occasions, causing flood damage on the Carenage.

Fort George (1706) on the headland is now the police headquarters, but public viewpoints have been erected from which to see the coast and harbour. Photographs are not allowed everywhere. Some old cannons are still in their positions and the views all round are tremendous. The French called it Fort Royale but the British named it Fort George. After the overthrow of Eric Gairy’s government in 1979 it was briefly renamed Fort Rupert, but reverted to George after the return of democratic rule in 1983. Just down from the Fort is St Andrew’s Presbyterian Kirk (1830) also known as Scot’s Kirk. On Church Street are a number of important buildings: St George’s Anglican Church (1825), the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (tower 1818, church 1884) and the Supreme Court and Parliament buildings (late 18th, early 19th century). St George’s oldest religious building is the Methodist Church (1820) on Green Street. Many of these buildings lost their roofs and sustained other damage from wind and rain during Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 and were still not repaired by 2007. There are proposals to reconstruct the Cathedral, keeping the tower and the sanctuary, which are structurally sound, but demolishing the rest and replacing it with a steel structure and new roof costing EC$3 mn and counting. The Anglican Church needs EC$2 mn as the roof fell in and the interior is nearly all destroyed, as are the parish buildings alongside.

The Esplanade has recently been developed to take pressure off the Carenage. The cruise ship pier and terminal is here, the entry point for thousands of tourists. Further north is the main bus terminal and a car park, then the new fish market, all built on reclaimed land on the seaward side of the road. The Market Square, off Halifax Street (one of the main streets, one steep block from the Esplanade), is always busy although the weekly market is on Saturday. There is a wide variety of local produce, herbs, spices and local crafts including luxuries such as nutmeg oil, nutmeg soap, rich cocoa balls, sold under cover. The trades people are keen to sell, but are polite, good-humoured and not pushy.

Just north of the city is Queen’s Park National Stadium, rebuilt after Ivan with the help of the Chinese, which is used for all the main sporting activities, cricket, carnival shows and political events. From Richmond Hill there are good views (and photo opportunities) of both St George’s and the mountains of the interior. On the hill are Forts Matthew (built by the French, 1779), Frederick (1791) and Adolphus (built in a higher position than Fort George to house new batteries of more powerful, longer range cannon), and the prison in which were held those convicted of murdering Maurice Bishop before Hurricane Ivan blew the roof off in 2004....read more