Basseterre

Basseterre was founded in 1627 by the French under Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, as the capital of the colony of Saint-Christophe, which held the two ends of the island while the English held the middle. After Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy became governor in 1639 it grew into a large port that commanded trade across the eastern Caribbean, and he made it the capital of the whole French West Indies, Guadeloupe and Martinique included, until his death in 1660. Once the French had been expelled and Britain held the whole island, the town became the capital of Saint Kitts in 1727.

Few Caribbean capitals have suffered so much. Basseterre has been wrecked by colonial wars, fire, earthquakes, floods, riots and hurricanes; the church on the site of St. George's alone was burned in 1706, damaged in the fire of 1763 and ruined by the earthquake of 1842 and the hurricane of 1843. Most of today's centre was built after the great fire of 1867. The Circus was laid out on the model of Piccadilly Circus, and its fountain and clock were raised in 1883. Independence Square, bought by the government in 1750 as Pall Mall Square, was where enslaved Africans were auctioned.

The narrow-gauge railway laid from 1912 brought the island's cane to a central sugar factory in Basseterre, and sugar ran the town's economy until the factory closed in 2005. The square took its present name at independence in 1983, Port Zante was built on reclaimed land in 1995, and the city hosted Carifesta in 2000 and matches of the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

Carnival is the city's great festival, running through Christmas and New Year with calypso, soca, steelpan and masquerade troupes. Its musical roots are local: iron bands, playing percussion on car rims and other scrap, joined the celebrations in the 1940s, modern Carnival took shape in the late 1950s, and brass bands dominated the 1960s. Seasonal Christmas songs are the best-known traditional music. Each June the St. Kitts Music Festival, begun in 1996 as the Shak Shak Festival, brings Caribbean and international acts.

Sport means cricket above all. Warner Park staged first-round matches of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, and it is home to the St Kitts & Nevis Patriots in the Caribbean Premier League. The same park's open ground, Carnival City, hosts Carnival shows.

Basseterre has a large number of churches for its size. Most are Protestant — Anglican first, then Methodist, Moravian, Baptist, Pentecostal and others — while the cathedral is Catholic, and Afro-Christian traditions are also widespread. The everyday language is Saint Kitts Creole, an English-based creole shaped by West African speech.

About 14,000 people lived in Basseterre in 2018, in the low Basseterre Valley ringed by the Olivees Mountains and the Conaree hills. The College and Westbourne ghauts, dry for most of the year, even form streets downtown and have flooded the town many times.

Basseterre is the federation's commercial and financial centre. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the Eastern Caribbean Securities Exchange and the St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank are headquartered here, and industrial estates turn out electronics, food products, beverages and rum. Federal government offices are here too, while Nevis's are in Charlestown. Fort Street and Bank Street hold most of the shops and banks, and on cruise days thousands of passengers fill Port Zante and the streets beyond.

The town has four secondary schools and two private medical institutions, the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and the International University of Nursing. Buses start from the waterfront and the east of town for villages round the island, and the ferries to Charlestown run several times a day for workers, shoppers and visitors moving between the two islands.

Goat water is the dish most associated with the islands: goat stewed with breadfruit and green pawpaw in a tomato base, with flour dumplings called droppers. Cook-up, or pelau, combines chicken, pig tail and saltfish with rice, pigeon peas and vegetables, and fresh seafood is plentiful.

The local drinks are a point of pride. CSR, Cane Spirits Rothschild, is distilled from fresh cane and counts as the national drink; mixed with Ting, the grapefruit soda, it becomes Ting with a Sting, the unofficial national drink. Carib and Stag beers have been brewed on Saint Kitts since 1997, and rum is as popular here as anywhere in the Caribbean.

The islands grow a wide variety of fresh produce, and the public market in town is one place to find it. For eating out, downtown has small local restaurants, while the strip of beach bars and restaurants at Frigate Bay offers meals by the sea.