Charlotte Amalie

The town began in the 1660s as Taphus — Danish for "tap house" — a harbour settlement known for its beer halls. The Danish West India Company chartered it in 1671, the Danes began building Fort Christian in 1672, and enslaved Africans were brought to work the island's plantations; by 1680 they outnumbered the European settlers. In 1691 the town was renamed after Charlotte Amalie, the wife of King Christian V. Pirates, Blackbeard among them, had long used the sheltered harbour.

When Denmark made St Croix the capital in 1754, Charlotte Amalie turned from plantation agriculture to trade. King Frederick V declared it a free port in 1764, and it became the busiest harbour in the Caribbean and one of its largest slave markets, with importing houses from across Europe and the Americas. Alexander Hamilton wrote that "gold moved through the streets in wheel-barrows", and at one point it was the second city of the Danish realm after Copenhagen. Fires in 1804, 1805 and 1806 destroyed more than two thousand buildings, and most of the colonial buildings standing today date from the 1830s.

Steamships made the port a coaling station, but trade declined after 1848, when abolition brought a deep recession. The Civil War briefly made it a base for blockade runners, and the capital returned here in 1871. The United States bought the islands in 1917 for 25 million dollars; the Navy ruled until 1931, and the town was officially called St Thomas from 1921 to 1936. When American tourists were barred from Cuba in 1960, some began coming here instead, and in the 1980s and 1990s many old buildings were restored. Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck in September 2017, damaging buildings including the synagogue.

The town's culture mixes Afro-Caribbean traditions with American habits and a strong Danish inheritance — street names, hillside step streets, and words of Danish origin in everyday Creole speech. Quelbe, also called scratch or fungi music, is the traditional music of the islands, and steel pan bands play at public events.

Carnival is the year's great celebration. Held in April and sometimes running into early May, it brings parades, a Carnival Village opened by the governor and the Carnival Queen, and stalls of food and crafts in Emancipation Garden. Emancipation Day on 3 July recalls the end of slavery in 1848, and the garden that commemorates it is the setting for official ceremonies.

The town's communities reflect centuries of trade. Frenchtown keeps the French-Caribbean traditions, cooking and religious practices of families who came from Saint-Barthélemy. Sephardic Jews settled as merchants in the 18th century, and their congregation still worships in the synagogue of 1833. The town is also the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Saint Thomas and of the Frederick Lutheran congregation, founded in 1666, whose present church was completed in 1793. Charlotte Amalie claims the Caribbean's largest collection of colonial buildings, many of them Danish adaptations of Georgian architecture from the 1830s.

The town itself had 8,194 people at the 2020 census, the most densely populated town in the territory, with more living in the neighbouring districts of Charlotte Amalie West and East that make up "the City". It has no local government of its own and is run directly by the territorial government, whose legislature, courts and Government House are all here.

The economy rests on tourism and shopping. About 1.5 million cruise passengers land each year; up to eleven ships can be in the harbour on a single day, though about five is usual. More than 400 shops line Main Street, many of them selling jewellery, and others cluster at the Havensight and Crown Bay docks. Rum, bay rum, jams and handicrafts are made locally, and the harbour has docks and shipyards. The University of the Virgin Islands has its main St Thomas campus just west of town.

The rhythm of the day follows the ships: the streets fill when passengers come ashore and empty in the evening, when locals head to Frenchtown or home to the hillside houses that have spread above the harbour since the 1960s. Steep terrain leaves little flat land, which limits the town's growth.

Virgin Islands cooking centres on fungi, pronounced "foon-gee" — a stiff cornmeal dish usually served with boiled fish or saltfish. Callaloo, sometimes spelled kallaloo, is a soup of callaloo leaves. For snacks there is paté, a turnover of fried dough filled with beef, chicken, conch or saltfish, and johnnycake, a fried dough originally known as "journey cake".

Seafood and local produce come from the open-air markets, and Market Square at the west end of Main Street still sells fruit, vegetables and herbs, above all early on Saturdays. Danish words survive at the table too: "frikadeller", meatballs, is still in use. Popular cold drinks include maubi, brewed from tree bark, sorrel, soursop, sea moss and passion fruit juice.

Frenchtown's waterfront restaurants are where many people go for an evening meal, and small cafés hide in the downtown alleys. Rum is made on the islands and sold duty free along Main Street, and the banana daiquiri is said to have been born at Mountain Top, high on the island.