Nassau

The town began in 1670 as Charles Town, founded by English settlers on the harbour of New Providence and named after King Charles II. It lived largely on privateering against the Spanish, who burned it to the ground in 1684. Renamed in honour of William III, Prince of Orange-Nassau, the sparsely settled town became a pirate haven in the early 18th century: the Governor of Bermuda reported more than a thousand pirates outnumbering about a hundred inhabitants, and Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane, Anne Bonny, Mary Read and Blackbeard all spent time here. In 1718 Woodes Rogers arrived as royal governor, clamped down on the pirates, rebuilt the fort and restored commerce.

During the American War of Independence, Continental Marines raided Fort Montagu and briefly occupied the town in 1776, and in 1783 the Loyalist Andrew Deveaux recaptured it for Britain. Loyalist planters and the people they enslaved arrived in large numbers, and under Lord Dunmore Fort Charlotte and Fort Fincastle were built, with enslaved workers cutting the Queen's Staircase through the limestone in 1793–94. After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, Africans freed from slave ships were resettled at Adelaide and Gambier villages, while the Over-the-Hill suburbs of Grants Town and Bain Town grew up south of the ridge.

Nassau profited from Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, and after 1959 restrictions on American travel to Cuba sent more tourists its way. A bridge to Paradise Island opened in 1966, and resort building followed. Until after the Second World War the outer suburbs scarcely existed; today the city dominates the entire island. A fire in 2001 destroyed the old market on Bay Street, replaced in 2011, the same year the Nassau Container Port was built on Arawak Cay.

Junkanoo is the city's great festival. In the early hours of Boxing Day and New Year's Day, organised groups parade through downtown in huge crepe-paper costumes, dancing to goatskin drums, cowbells, whistles and brass, and judges award prizes for music, costumes and overall presentation.

Nassau is also the seat of government, and colonial ceremony survives around Parliament Square, where the pink House of Assembly faces a statue of Queen Victoria and the old jail has served as the public library since 1873. Christ Church Cathedral and many other churches anchor the city's neighbourhoods, and the National Art Gallery, conceived after independence to tell the nation's own story, shows Bahamian painting and sculpture. Straw-plaiting is the traditional craft, sold in the Straw Market.

Sport means athletics above all: Nassau hosted the World Athletics Relays in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2024, and Bahamian sprinters are national heroes. Family, church and the weekend gathering are the anchors of social life.

Nassau is a classic primate city, dwarfing every other town in the country and holding its commerce, education, law, government and media. The city had 292,522 people at the 2022 census, and nearly three-quarters of all Bahamians live on New Providence, the island it now dominates, a population swollen by generations of migration from the Family Islands.

Tourism is the base of the economy. Cruise ships bring large numbers of passengers onto Bay Street, the big hotels of Cable Beach and Paradise Island are major employers, and banking, government and the port provide much of the rest. Residents and visitors experience the waterfront very differently: for cruise passengers it is a shopping street, for Nassuvians a working centre of offices, courts and parliament. By the end of the 1950s land on Bay Street had become very expensive.

Most people live in the suburbs that spread south and west over the island, from the older Over-the-Hill neighbourhoods to newer subdivisions, and nearly everything depends on the car or the jitney. The high cost of imported goods is an everyday complaint, and every summer the city watches the hurricane forecasts.

Conch is the city's staple, eaten as conch salad — raw conch "cooked" in lime and citrus juice with onion, sweet pepper and tomato, chopped to order — as cracked conch, battered and fried, and as fritters. Popular places to eat it are the stalls at Potter's Cay under the Paradise Island bridge and the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay on West Bay Street, a row of local eateries where Nassuvians gather for fried and grilled fish, music and drinks.

Plates come with peas 'n' rice, baked macaroni "pie" and coleslaw, and fried grouper and stew fish are as common as conch. Souse, a lime-and-pepper broth, and johnnycake are breakfast food, and guava duff is the classic pudding.

Rum-based drinks such as rum punch are popular; Kalik and Sands are the local beers. Downtown also has plenty of international chains for the cruise crowds, but local cooking is at the markets and the fish fry.