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Basseterre has been destroyed by colonial wars, fire, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes so many times that most of what you see in the centre dates from after the great fire of 1867, which had the unintended benefit of producing a coherent streetscape of Victorian Caribbean commercial architecture that is genuinely attractive. The Circus, a roundabout at the city's main junction modelled on London's Piccadilly Circus, has a Victorian clock tower at its centre that was donated in 1883 and still works, which is more than can be said for London's traffic at the original.

Basseterre was founded in 1627 by the French colonizer Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, and from 1627 to 1660 served as the administrative capital of all French Caribbean possessions, a status that history subsequently reassigned to Martinique with characteristic Caribbean inconstancy.

The British took Saint Kitts formally in 1727 and left their architectural grammar on Independence Square, where Georgian buildings face a central garden that was once used for slave auctions. The Basseterre Co-Cathedral and St. George's Anglican Church represent the two colonial religious traditions that divided the island's population and now coexist in easy proximity.