Saint Kitts: the UNESCO fortress of the Caribbean

First British and French colonial possession in the Caribbean, Saint Kitts houses a UNESCO World Heritage fortress among the best-preserved in the region.

A tourist train and local taxis remain the most common way to move around.

The Brimstone Hill Fortress, a UNESCO heritage site, remains one of the best-preserved British military fortifications in the Caribbean, built by enslaved Africans in the Seventeenth century.

A few minutes away, the St Kitts Scenic Railway, a former sugar cane transport railway, today offers a panoramic tour of the island on historic tracks.

Continuing toward the capital Basseterre, one visits the Circus, a circular plaza in British colonial style with a Victorian clock at its center.

Toward evening, the black-sand beaches of volcanic Saint Kitts offer an unusual sunset compared to common white Caribbean beaches.

Brimstone Hill Fort, nicknamed 'Gibraltar of the Caribbean' for its dominant strategic position, was built over the course of a century entirely by enslaved African labor.

Saint Kitts was the first Caribbean island to be colonized by both the English and the French in the same period, giving rise to decades of Anglo-French conflicts over control of the island and its plantations.