Bridgetown: the UNESCO-listed Garrison

On National Heroes Square, the Parliament Buildings in Neo-Gothic style face a parliament established in 1639, among the oldest still active in the anglophone world.

Descending toward the port, one walks along the Careenage, the inlet where ships were once tilted on one side and pulled dry to clean and repair the hull — an operation called careening, from which it derives its name — right next to the bridge that gave the city its name.

Not far away, the Nidhe Israel Synagogue, founded in 1654 by Sefardi Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil, is among the oldest in the entire Western Hemisphere.

In the afternoon, the Garrison Historic Area, a former British military base recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2011, still hosts horse races on the lawn that once served as a parade ground.

The cemetery adjacent to the synagogue preserves headstones in Hebrew, Portuguese, and English that tell of nearly four centuries of uninterrupted Jewish presence on the island.

Watching horse races on a field originally designed for nineteenth-century military exercises is one of the most concrete ways to understand how Bridgetown has gradually repurposed its colonial legacy.