Nassau

Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas, on the north shore of New Providence island facing Paradise Island. Junkanoo, its chief festival, fills the streets with costumed dancers moving to cowbells, drums and whistles.

English settlers founded the town in 1670 around a fort named Charles Town, after King Charles II. A Spanish raid burned it in the 1680s, and it was rebuilt in 1695 under Governor Nicholas Trott and renamed in honor of William III, a prince of the House of Orange-Nassau. Woodes Rogers, sent out as royal governor in the late 1710s, drove off the pirates who had used the harbor as a base and brought back trade. Lord Dunmore, governor from the late 1780s, had Fort Charlotte built on the hill west of the harbor, and the town spread along the shore and the ridge behind it through the 19th century.

Atlantis Paradise Island, a resort with a large water park and aquarium, lies across the harbor and is reached from the city by bridges. Cruise ships tie up at Prince George Wharf beside downtown, a trade that grew quickly after the United States banned travel to Cuba in the early 1960s. Commonwealth Brewery brews Kalik in Nassau, a lager named after the sound of cowbells.

The Queen's Staircase, a flight of steps cut into the limestone in the late 18th century and later named for Queen Victoria, climbs to Fort Fincastle, whose walls are shaped like the bow of a paddle steamer. Sidney Poitier spent part of his youth in Nassau before leaving for Miami as a teenager, years before he became the first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. The airport west of the city bears the name of Lynden Pindling, the first prime minister of the independent Bahamas.