Welcome to St. John's, the largest city of Antigua and Barbuda, wrapped around St. John's Harbour on the west of Antigua. The city was established after the French invasion of 1666, became an official trading point in 1675, and by 1689 it had overtaken Falmouth as the island's leading town. Curiously, although St. John's houses all three branches of government, no law has ever declared it the official capital. It has seen fires and hurricanes over the centuries, but has largely been spared from armed conflict. Let's set out from the harbour to discover its cathedral, forts and historic dockyard.
St. John's Cathedral
Photo: D'Arcy Norman · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsLook up the hill at St. John's Cathedral, with its imposing white twin towers. This Anglican cathedral is the seat of the Diocese of the North East Caribbean and Aruba. The church you see was built in 1845 on a fossilised reef, and it is the third on this site, since earthquakes in 1683 and 1745 destroyed the earlier buildings. Now look at the iron gates on the south side, flanked by statues of St John the Divine and St John the Baptist. They were reportedly taken in 1756 from a French ship bound for Martinique.
Fort James
Photo: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsStanding on a headland at the entrance to the harbour, Fort James was built by the British to guard St. John's against a feared French invasion. It is named after King James the Second of England. Work began in 1706, and most of its buildings date from 1739. By 1773 it was armed with 36 guns and housed 75 men. In the nineteenth century a gun here fired salutes to visiting warships and signals at sunrise and sunset. A powder magazine and cannons remain, and the view over the harbour is superb.
Museum of Antigua and Barbuda
Photo: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsStep inside the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda, housed in the colonial Court House of 1747, the oldest building still in use in the city. It stands on the site of the first city market. Inside you can see Arawak and colonial artefacts from archaeological digs, a life-sized replica of an Arawak house and models of sugar plantations. Cricket lovers, look out for Viv Richards' bat. Outside, old sugar cane railway locomotives recall the island's once extensive rail system.
Redcliffe Quay
Photo: Dr. Thomas Liptak · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsWander into Redcliffe Quay, today a lively area of tropical gardens, cafés, boutiques and art galleries beside the cruise port. Its past is far darker. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this busy waterfront was the main place in the colony where enslaved people were traded, and it held a slave compound until emancipation in 1834. Rum, sugar and coffee also passed through here. Most of the buildings date from those times, making the quay the largest collection of historic buildings in the city, and the centre of the country's art scene.
Nelson's Dockyard
Photo: David Stanley · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsNow we travel to English Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard, the only continuously working Georgian-era dockyard in the world. Built in the early eighteenth century, it was abandoned by the Royal Navy in 1889. It takes its name from Admiral Horatio Nelson, who lived here from 1784 to 1787. Today it is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a marina, where sails fill the harbour during Antigua Sailing Week and the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta.
Shirley Heights
Photo: Thank You (23 Millions+) views · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsOur tour ends high above English Harbour at Shirley Heights, a military compound built to protect the naval dockyard below. The idea came in 1781 from Thomas Shirley, newly appointed Governor of the Leeward Islands. More than 50 structures rose here between 1781 and 1825, including a fort, barracks, powder magazines, a signal station and a cemetery. When the Antiguan government stopped paying in 1790, Britain funded the rest, fearing a French attack. That fear proved real: in 1803, 700 men sailed from Guadeloupe to attack Antigua, but they failed.
Lomakuume
