Kingston

About Kingston

Kingston is the capital city in Jamaica. GeoNames lists a population of 937,700. Local time follows the America/Jamaica time zone. [1]

The nearest larger airport is Norman Manley International Airport (KIN), about 7 km away. [1]

Kingston is the commercial and cultural capital of Jamaica with nearly a million people calling the city home. At one point, it was the only city in Jamaica. The city is assigned the equivalent of postal codes, (Kingston 5, Kingston 10, etc.) which is a good representation of how truly large this city is, especially for an island such as Jamaica. There are two major sections to this city: 'downtown' and 'uptown,' also referred to as 'New Kingston.' (Wikivoyage) [1]

Kingston is the capital and largest city. [1]

Jamaica became a Crown Colony in 1866 and the capital moved from Spanish Town to Kingston in 1872. [1]

A 1907 earthquake and the fire that followed caused considerable destruction in Kingston and the deaths of 800 to 1,000 people. [1]

The local governments of Kingston and St Andrew are consolidated as the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, and the newest city municipality is Portmore, created in 2003 and governed independently of St Catherine. [1]

Norman Manley International Airport is 19 km from downtown Kingston, bordered by the seventh largest natural harbour in the world, and is the primary airport for business travel and air cargo. [1]

Jamaica has cruise ship ports in Ocho Rios, Montego Bay, Port Antonio, Falmouth and Kingston. [1]

Text marked Wikivoyage is from https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?oldid=5407294, licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0; changes: trimmed to the opening paragraphs. CC BY-SA 4.0

Kingston: what to know

Start at the National Gallery, then walk the mural streets. The Institute of Jamaica houses the National Museum Jamaica and the Jamaica Music Museum, and Liberty Hall is a museum to Marcus Garvey. On Duke Street, the Shaare Shalom synagogue of 1912 keeps a sand floor, one of only a handful in the world. Parade, renamed Saint William Grant Park in 1977, is where buses from all over the island end their run, and Coronation Market, near Victoria Pier, sells fresh produce. Sabina Park sits in the heart of the city, and National Heroes Park keeps the heroes' monuments in the part called the Shrine. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Devon House is a fine example of nineteenth-century domestic architecture in Jamaica, and people come for the restored rooms and antique furniture, the craft shops and the ice cream, in flavours such as Devon Stout and Fruit Basket. Leave room for the ice cream, and do not pretend you won't. [1][2]

Hope Gardens, the Royal Botanical Gardens, is a 200-acre park, the largest public green space around Kingston, with a cacti garden, a bougainvillea walk, sunken gardens and a lily pond. The Peter Tosh Museum is at the Pulse Centre, 38a Trafalgar Road, in New Kingston. New Kingston, the business hub, started out as the Knutsford Park race track and is home to several hotels, and Half-Way Tree, the Saint Andrew capital, is a busy commercial centre. Stay in New Kingston for restaurants on the doorstep, or up at Strawberry Hill, in the Blue Mountains, for cool nights. [1][2][3][4][5][6]

Trench Town Culture Yard was declared protected national heritage in 2007, and inside you can see the original government tenement yards, the room where Marley slept and his mother's former home, and buy crafts made in the community. Kingston Creative's three-hour guided tour calls at the yard. Go with a guide, not on your own, for the stories and for safety. [1][2]

Downtown, F&B Downtown puts dining, shopping and art under one roof. For curried goat, Moby Dick is the name, and for something from further afield there is Chinese at Jade Garden, Indian curries at Nirvanna and Italian at Fromage Brasserie. In New Kingston, Summerhouse is a gastropub in the middle of the business district. [1]

By day, music fans can add the Bunny Lee Museum and Recording Studio, at 17 Burns Avenue. Janga's Sound Bar and Grill is on Belmont Road, and on Sundays you can go to Kingston Dub Club, an open-air reggae and dub gathering in the city's mountains. Take a taxi both ways, and read chapter 23 on Kingston after dark before you go. [1][2][3]

Port Royal greets you with fishing boats, the Coast Guard and Fort Charles, the oldest fort on the island, built in the shape of a ship. The tour of the fort and its cannon takes about forty-five minutes. The sea once almost surrounded the fort before the land around it silted up, and from Nelson's Quarterdeck you can see where the sunken city lies. The Giddy House, an artillery store of 1888, was tipped to a 45 degree angle by the 1907 earthquake, and people often feel giddy or off balance when they step inside. Saint Peter's Church, rebuilt in 1725 and 1726, keeps its original black and white floor tiles. Ask to go in if it is open. You can view artifacts at the Port Royal Archaeological Museum. The naval hospital of about 1818 is an early cast iron building, put up with the labour of enslaved Africans. [1][2][3]

Gloria's cooks to order, so be patient, and its branch on Queen Street has a view of Kingston city. At Y Knot Bar and Grill you get outdoor seating with views of the harbour, and charters to the cays leave from there. Give Port Royal half a day and the cay the afternoon: fish, fort, boat, in that order. [1]

At Hellshire Beach, family-run seafood stalls feed Kingston at weekends and on holidays, with escoveitch fish, lobster and festival on the plate. The Hellshire Hills hold Two Sisters Cave, where each cave has a large sinkhole holding fresh water, and a carved face about seven hundred years old. [1][2]

No city on the island has been lived in without a break for longer than Spanish Town. In its square, look for Rodney's Memorial by John Bacon, the burnt-out front of King's House and the Old House of Assembly. The Georgian Old Court House once stood on the south side, the final building of the square, until fire destroyed it in 1986. The cathedral, the oldest in the British Caribbean, has marble memorials in its floor from the 1700s, and the town's iron bridge is the oldest of its kind in the western hemisphere. Spanish Town is on Britain's list for particular caution. Make it a daytime stop, with a local driver. On the highway from Kingston, the White Marl museum, built in the shape of a Taino hut, stands by a midden considered one of the most important Taino sites in the Caribbean, and it was established in 1965 in memory of the American archaeologist Dr. Randolph Howard. Ring ahead before you make the detour. Spanish Town connects with Bog Walk through the Bog Walk Gorge, and north of Bog Walk lie the towns of Linstead and Ewarton. [1][2][3][4]

Highlights

• Tour the Bob Marley Museum on Hope Road, his former home, where he lived and recorded, and see his personal belongings and the bullet holes from 1976. [1][2][3]
• Trench Town Culture Yard, at 6 and 8 Lower First Street, is where Bob Marley lived and where No Woman No Cry was written. [1]
• Devon House, at Hope and Waterloo Roads, was built in the 1880s by George Stiebel, the island's first black millionaire. [1]
• The National Gallery of Jamaica holds a collection of local and Caribbean art. [1]

Facts

• The Institute of Jamaica downtown houses the National Museum Jamaica and the Jamaica Music Museum. [1]
• Liberty Hall is a museum to Marcus Garvey, leader of the Pan-African movement. [1]
• The Shaare Shalom synagogue and heritage centre stands on Duke Street in Kingston, with its walk-in entrance on Charles Street. [1]
• Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom in Kingston, originally built in 1912, is the only Jewish place of worship left on the island and is one of the few synagogues in the world with sand-covered floors. [1]
• Shaare Shalom is one of a handful of synagogues in the world with a sand floor. [1]
• The square at the centre of the city, originally Victoria Park, was renamed St William Grant Park in 1977 for the labour leader, and serves as the terminus for buses from across the island. [1]
• Parade is a terminus for buses from all over the island and perhaps the busiest centre of activity in Kingston. [1]
• Coronation Market, for fresh produce, and the Kingston Craft Market are both near the Jamaica Conference Centre and Victoria Pier in downtown Kingston. [1]
• Sabina Park is in the heart of Kingston. [1]
• The site was renamed National Heroes Park in 1973, and the heroes' monuments stand in the part of it called the Shrine. [1]
• Devon House is a notable example of nineteenth-century domestic architecture in Jamaica. [1]
• What draws people to Devon House is the restored rooms with their antique furniture, and also the shops selling Jamaican craft and the places serving Jamaican food. [1]

Source: guidebook:jamaica@e9d2829. Checked Sun Nov 08.