Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas and one of the busiest ports in the Caribbean. It sits on New Providence Island, which holds more than 70 percent of the country's population despite being the eleventh largest island in the chain. Nassau is where most visitors to the Bahamas arrive, where the country's government, courts, banks, and media are based, and where the full arc of Bahamian history is most visible, from the pirate republic of the early 1700s to the independence movement of the 1970s. Paradise Island, formerly called Hog Island, sits just across Nassau Harbour, connected by two bridges.
- Airport: Lynden Pindling International Airport (NAS / MYNN), 16 kilometers west of city center
- Climate: Tropical monsoon. Average 24°C in winter, 28°C in summer. Rarely below 18°C.
Why people visit Nassau
Nassau draws visitors for three distinct reasons that often overlap in a single trip.
The first is history. Downtown Nassau covers roughly 20 square blocks of colonial architecture, forts, monuments, and museums. Bay Street, the oldest thoroughfare in the Bahamas, runs along the waterfront past pastel-colored buildings, Parliament Square, the Straw Market, and the cruise ship docks. The Queen's Staircase, 66 steps carved from solid limestone in 1794, connects Fort Fincastle to the city below. Fort Charlotte, the largest fort on New Providence, spans 100 acres on the western edge of the city and includes a waterless moat, drawbridge, ramparts, and dungeons. Christ Church Cathedral, first built in 1670, has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times and became a cathedral in 1861. Government House, the official residence of the Governor-General since 1801, sits pink and white on top of Mount Fitzwilliam and hosts a Changing of the Guard ceremony twice monthly.
The second is Paradise Island. Huntington Hartford, the A&P supermarket heir, bought Hog Island in 1961 and renamed it Paradise Island in 1962. He built the Ocean Club hotel and golf course. In 1994, South African developer Sol Kerzner transformed the property into Atlantis, now a sprawling resort of hotels, casinos, water parks, and a marine habitat housing 50,000 animals. The first bridge to Paradise Island was built in 1966. A second followed in the late 1990s. The oldest lighthouse in the Bahamas, built on the western end of the island in 1817, still stands. The French Cloisters at the top of the Versailles Gardens are the reconstructed remains of a 14th-century French monastery, brought from Europe by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and reassembled here in the 1960s. James Bond films Thunderball in 1965 and Casino Royale in 2006 were both partially filmed on Paradise Island.
The third is the water and beaches. Cable Beach, west of downtown, got its name from the transatlantic telegraph cable laid there in 1907 linking the Bahamas to the rest of the world. It is now lined with large resorts. Jaws Beach, further west, is quieter. Cabbage Beach on Paradise Island faces the Atlantic and is the longest beach in the Nassau area. Diving off New Providence includes walls, wrecks, and the Lost Blue Hole. Clifton Heritage National Park on the southwestern tip of New Providence has an underwater sculpture garden and the ruins of an 18th-century Loyalist plantation.
Video about cruising in Nassau
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What made Nassau
New Providence was settled by English colonists around 1666. They built Charles Town, which the Spanish burned in 1684. It was rebuilt in 1695 and renamed Nassau in honor of King William III of the House of Orange-Nassau. A series of ineffective governors led to the collapse of order. From 1703 to 1718, Nassau had no legitimate governor. More than 1,000 pirates occupied the town, outnumbering law-abiding residents. The port was a den of taverns and brothels, with burned trading vessels littering the harbour. Blackbeard, Charles Vane, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read all based themselves here. Pirate Thomas Barrow declared himself Governor of New Providence.
Woodes Rogers arrived in 1718 with British warships and a royal pardon for any pirate willing to surrender. Most accepted. Those who refused were caught and hanged. Rogers cleaned up Nassau, rebuilt the fort, and gave the colony its motto: Expulsis Piratis, Restituta Commercia, Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored. The Bahamas became a British Crown colony that same year.
After 1807, when Britain banned the slave trade, the Royal Navy intercepted slave ships and freed their passengers in Nassau. Thousands of West Africans settled in the Over-the-Hill district, the suburbs of Grants Town and Bain Town south of the city. By 1834, three-quarters of the Bahamian population was of West African descent. Over-the-Hill remains a distinct neighborhood today, culturally separate from the colonial city on the ridge above.
During the American Civil War, Nassau served as a blockade runner port, trading Confederate cotton for European supplies. During Prohibition, it prospered again from rum running to the United States. In the 1940s, King Edward VIII, who had abdicated the British throne to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson, served as Governor of the Bahamas and lived in Nassau. In 1953, Lynden Pindling, who had grown up in Over-the-Hill, formed the Progressive Liberal Party. Twenty years later that party led the Bahamas to independence on July 10, 1973.
What you find
Nassau is a functioning city of nearly 300,000 people. It has traffic, commercial districts, a university, and more than 400 banks and trust companies. It is also the place where most first-time visitors to the Bahamas form their impression of the country, for better or worse.
Downtown is walkable and compact. The Pompey Museum, formerly Vendue House, built before 1769 and once used as a slave market, now holds a permanent exhibit on the African experience in the Bahamas. The National Art Gallery occupies a colonial mansion. The Educulture Junkanoo Museum documents the national street festival. The Pirates of Nassau Museum reconstructs the pirate republic with interactive displays. The Straw Market on Bay Street, relocated after the original burned in 2001, sells handmade Bahamian goods.
West of downtown, the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay is the local food strip: a row of casual restaurants and beach shacks serving fresh conch, grilled fish, and Kalik beer. Potter's Cay, under the Paradise Island bridge, is where fishing boats unload their catch and where conch salad is made and sold fresh from the shell. John Watling's Distillery, the only rum distillery in the Bahamas, operates on a historic Nassau estate and is open for tours. Ardastra Gardens and Zoo, west of the city, keeps West Indian flamingos and more than 300 animals including the only marching flamingo display in the world.
