Belize City

Belize City grew from a small Maya settlement called Holzuz at the mouth of Haulover Creek. English woodcutters founded Belize Town there in the 17th century, and the site suited them well: it lay on the sea at the natural outlet of the rivers and creeks down which logwood and later mahogany were floated for shipment. Thousands of enslaved Africans were brought in to work in the forests, and the town became their home as well as the Baymen's. The defence against the Spanish at the Battle of St George's Caye in 1798 was coordinated from here.

As the seat of the courts and the colonial government, the town was so dominant that historians say "the capital was the colony". Its street names still carry that past — Orange Street was named after the Protestant Orange Order. St John's Cathedral was built between 1812 and 1820 and the governor's residence from 1814, and in 1923 the Swing Bridge, made in Liverpool, replaced the wooden bridges over Haulover Creek. The city was the centre of the 20th-century labour and independence movements, even when their leaders tried to take them beyond it.

Disasters have repeatedly reshaped it. A hurricane in 1931 devastated the city, and Hurricane Hattie almost entirely destroyed it in October 1961, which led the government to move to the new inland capital of Belmopan in 1970. Large fires burnt out stretches of housing in 1999 and 2004, and Hurricane Richard in 2010 and Hurricane Earl in 2016 caused heavy damage. The city nonetheless remains the country's main port and its commercial heart.

Belize City is a centre of the Creole community, and Kriol is widely spoken. Its culture is often compared with that of Caribbean capitals such as St George's in Grenada or Georgetown in Guyana. Creole music includes brukdown, played on guitar, banjo, accordion and percussion that can include a donkey's jawbone.

The year's high point is September, from St George's Caye Day on 10 September to Independence Day on 21 September, with a carnival whose road march is usually held on the Saturday before 10 September. Baron Bliss Day in March, now National Heroes and Benefactors Day, honours the benefactor whose trust built the Bliss Institute, and Garifuna Settlement Day on 19 November is also celebrated. The city is the country's cultural centre: the Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts, which holds the National Art Collection, the Museum of Belize, the Maritime Museum, the House of Culture and independent galleries such as the Image Factory, as well as an annual street art festival.

Churches, among them the Anglican cathedral of St John's, remain part of community life. Most children in the city go on to high school, and the Northside's St John's College for boys and St Catherine's Academy and Pallotti High School for girls are its only single-sex schools.

Belize City had 63,999 people at the 2022 census, the largest population of any city in the country. Haulover Creek divides it into the Northside, which runs east to the Fort George area, and the Southside, which takes in downtown, the port and most of the city's outskirts. Three canals — Haulover Creek, Burdon Canal and Collet Canal — run through the Southside, where neighbourhoods such as Lake Independence, Collet and Port Loyola are home to some of the city's poorest residents, and rickety wooden walkways known as "London bridges" link some houses. The Northside includes quieter suburbs such as Buttonwood Bay and Kings Park.

The city is the country's principal port and its financial and industrial hub. All the major banks, the Central Bank, nearly all insurance companies and the Supreme Court are here, and it is the hub for air, sea and road travel. Many residents work in downtown offices; many others trade from stalls and the roadside. Cruise passengers come ashore at Fort George, where the Tourism Village opens when a ship is in port.

The city is governed by a mayor and ten councillors, elected every three years. It has more schools at every level than any other city in Belize. Flooding in the rainy season, poverty and gang violence in parts of the Southside are persistent problems.

Belize City's Creole kitchen shows at breakfast: fry jacks, flattened and fried dough, and johnny cakes, round fluffy savoury biscuits, served with beans and eggs and often cheese. Rice and beans and stew chicken are among the midday staples. Boil up, of fish or pig tail with boiled eggs and ground foods such as cassava and green plantain, is considered the cultural dish of the Kriols.

Small snacks fill the gaps. Meat pies are sold from small shops in the city, and coconut and cassava go into Creole desserts such as coconut tarts and cassava pone. Creole dinners add fish, conch and game meats such as gibnut, and ceviche is served by the Bliss lighthouse.

The city's mix of peoples shows at the table. There are Chinese restaurants, snacks of Mestizo origin such as garnaches and panades are now eaten across Belize, and fresh juices such as watermelon are on offer. Belikin, Belize's leading beer, whose logo shows the Temple of the Masonry Altars at Altun Ha, is brewed in Belize.