Willemstad Audio Tours

Willemstad was established in 1634 when the Dutch West India Company took the island from Spain and found a natural deep-water harbour worth keeping. The city they built over the following centuries became a centre of Atlantic trade and, from 1674, home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere, Sephardic Jews who had fled Portugal and Brazil and found shelter here under Dutch tolerance. The Mikve Israel-Emanuel synagogue, built that same year, has sand on its floor, a tradition tracing back to either biblical desert wanderings or to Iberian conversos hiding the sound of secret prayers under their feet, depending on which historian you ask.

The Handelskade, the row of Dutch colonial buildings facing the Sint Anna Bay in the Punda district, is one of the most photographed waterfronts in the Caribbean.

What the photos do not convey is the colour: yellows, pinks, oranges, and greens applied with a conviction that Dutch architecture at home would never permit. Legend attributes this to a colonial governor who claimed white buildings gave him migraines; historians attribute it to the availability of coloured pigments from Dutch trading networks. Either way, the result is a streetscape that is simultaneously Dutch in its proportions and entirely Caribbean in its palette.