Philipsburg

Philipsburg stands on a narrow strip of land with the sea on one side and a salt lake, the Great Salt Pond, on the other. The Dutch built Fort Amsterdam on the headland in 1631 to guard their outpost; the Spanish captured it two years later and held it until 1648, beating off a Dutch attack in 1644 in which Peter Stuyvesant, later governor of New Amsterdam, lost his leg. After the island's partition in 1648 the fort changed hands several times between the Dutch, English and French, but stayed mostly Dutch.

People had settled on the strip by about 1631, and around 1733 the town was founded under John Philips, a Scot from Arbroath serving the Dutch as vice-commander, to centralise the island's trade. His name for it first appears in a letter he wrote to the West India Company in 1738. Under Philips many English planters settled on the Dutch side, bringing English-speaking enslaved people with them. In 1768 Philipsburg became the island's chief town and a trading centre, and Fort Willem was added in the 18th century.

Tourism transformed it from the 1950s and 1960s, with duty-free shopping, the cruise port and the boardwalk built for the cruise trade. In 2010 Sint Maarten became a self-governing country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Philipsburg as its capital. In September 2017 Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, hit the island head-on, wrecking the airport and much of the building stock; a Dutch-funded reconstruction programme has driven a slow recovery.

Philipsburg's culture is the island's Caribbean mix. English is the first language of about seven in ten people in Sint Maarten, followed by Spanish, Haitian Creole and Dutch, and the population brings together long-established families with communities from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Dominica, Jamaica, Guyana, India and elsewhere. Methodism was historically the dominant church on the Dutch side, unlike the mainly Catholic French side, and the Methodist church on Front Street is one of the town's landmarks, alongside the Catholic church of St. Martin of Tours.

Carnival is the biggest event of the year. The Dutch side's season runs from April into May, after Easter, and its Grand Carnival parade is the larger of the island's two, with calypso and soca competitions, costumed troupes and street jump-ups. Music festivals such as Soul Beach are promoted to draw visitors, and the March regatta fills the bay with yachts.

Older traditions include string bands, ponum dance and guavaberry liqueur, which features in island Christmas songs. Sint Maarten Day on 11 November celebrates the island's shared identity on both sides of the border.

The town had 1,894 inhabitants in 2017; Sint Maarten as a whole had 58,477 people in June 2023. Philipsburg is the seat of government and the main port of entry, with schools, the courthouse and public offices among the shops.

The economy is tourism. Around four-fifths of the country's workforce is employed in the sector, and Philipsburg is its centre: the deep-water port can take six cruise ships at once, and on busy days thousands of passengers fill Front Street, the boardwalk and Great Bay Beach. Several boardwalk bars stay open after the ships leave and are popular in the evening, especially on Fridays.

Residents shop on Back Street, the everyday street behind Front Street, and travel by the minibuses that leave from Emmaplein. Life is shaped by the cruise schedule, by the long recovery from Hurricane Irma, and by the island's exposure to shocks such as the pandemic, which showed how heavily it depends on visitors.

Sint Maarten's food mixes Creole, French and West Indian cooking with Dutch and Indian touches. Conch broth with dumplings is often called the island's national dish, and seafood and stews form the Creole base. In Philipsburg, the menu runs from Dutch bar snacks — bitterballen, crisp fried meat-ragout balls, and frikandel, a skinless sausage — to Indian roti shops and international restaurants along the boardwalk.

Guavaberry is the town's signature flavour: a tart wild fruit made into a rum-based liqueur closely associated with the island and drunk especially at Christmas. It is sold in most bars, and the Guavaberry Emporium on Front Street is devoted to it.

Local rums, Carib and Presidente beers and fresh tropical juices are the usual drinks, and some beach bars on the boardwalk sell local craft beer. The roadside lolos and restaurant street of Grand Case, on the French side, are a short drive away for Creole grills.