Ocho Rios, Port Antonio & the North Coast
The Asafu Culture Yard is a sort of house complex with gardens and a museum operated by the Charles Town Maroon Council, an educational outreach…
Must-see attractions in Jamaica
Kingston
These 18-hectare gardens, replete with manicured grounds, exotic plants and beautiful flowers, date back to 1881, when the government established an…
Kingston, Blue Mountains & the Southeast Coast
Just north of Newcastle, you can take a one-hour tour of the attractive 200-year-old Craighton Estate Great House and coffee plantation. During the tour,…
Ocho Rios
This park is a tropical fantasia of ferns and bromeliads, palms and exotic shrubs, spread out over 11 hectares centered on an old great house (once a…
Ocho Rios, Port Antonio & the North Coast
Tacky Falls is so pristine and isolated that, if you stumbled across them wandering up the coast from Robin’s Bay, you might be tempted to claim them as…
Ocho Rios
The small and charming Mahogany Beach is particularly popular with locals; it comes to life on weekends with loud music, smells of jerk cooking and…
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
This cave may be off the beaten track to most people, but it's one of Jamaica's most important bat habitats, home to 12 species of around 100,000 bats. It…
Montego Bay
It may sound like a rocky hole inhabited by lab-coated troglodytes, but this is actually Montego Bay’s most famous beach and the one with the most…
Jamaica
One of the most impressive historical sights in the central highlands, the 18th-century Marshall’s Pen great house has a story that manages to encapsulate…
Kingston, Blue Mountains & the Southeast Coast
A dilapidated old house sits atop these 2.5-hectare gardens, fronted by lawns and exquisite floral beds. It's a little rundown, but the views are fabulous…
Rocklands Bird Feeding Station
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
This bird sanctuary is run by Fritz Beckford, a passionate champion of birds who will pour birdseed into your hand or provide you with a sugar-water…
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
Glistening Waters, also known as ‘Luminous Lagoon,’ actually lives up to the hype. Located in an estuary near Rock, 1.6km east of Falmouth, the water here…
Port Antonio
This rather appropriately named two-story, 60-room mansion on the peninsula east of East Harbour was built entirely of concrete in pseudo-Grecian style in…
Kingston
The Institute of Jamaica is the nation’s small-scale equivalent of the British Museum or Smithsonian, housed in three separate buildings – the National…
Kingston
Beat Street is the popular name for Orange St, running north from the corner of Parade. It's one of the great wellsprings of Jamaican music and was home…
Indigenous Rastafarian Village
Montego Bay
If you want to learn about the Rastafarian movement, come out to this…hmmm...‘theme park’ is definitely not the right description. How about ‘living…
Ocho Rios, Port Antonio & the North Coast
This impressive system of caves and tunnels, 3km east of Discovery Bay, extends for about 45km. The steps lead down into the impressive chambers, where…
Montego Bay Marine Park & Bogue Lagoon
Montego Bay
The waters of Montego Bay are gorgeous to behold both above and below the surface, but they have long been compromised by the effects of fishing, water…
Montego Bay
Regarded as the finest church on the island, it was originally built between 1775 and 1782, but was so damaged by the earthquake of March 1, 1957, that it…
Kingston
Reggae legend Peter Tosh finally gets his due in this tiny museum. A co-founder of The Wailers (he co-wrote 'Get up, Stand up'), Tosh was an early…
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
While disappointingly light on revolutionary pigs corrupted by the acquisition of power (if you haven’t read your Orwell, never mind), this Animal Farm…
Negril & West Coast
Between Negril and Little Bay, a mildly potholed back road passes through the village of Orange Hill, (in)famous around the island as a major marijuana…
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
The best place to orient yourself is Water Sq, at the east end of Duke St. Named for an old circular stone reservoir dating from 1798, the square …
Kingston, Blue Mountains & the Southeast Coast
The idyllic Lime Cay is one of half a dozen or so uninhabited, white sand–rimmed coral cays about 3km offshore from Port Royal. Immortalized in the final…
Montego Bay
Built in 1735, the restored Bellefield showcases 18th-century colonial living and Jamaican culinary history. You get to see the local gardens with…
Ocho Rios, Port Antonio & the North Coast
This vast botanical garden is a tranquil treat, crafted in the lush valley that carves up into the hills south of Laughlands, about 5km west of Priory…
Ocho Rios
This beautiful botanic garden has walkways and trails leading past pools and streams, and feeders buzzing with hummingbirds – a lovely quiet escape from…
Kingston
Jamaica’s only synagogue is an attractive white building dating from 1912. It's usually locked, though on weekdays there is often someone in the little…
Sir Alexander Bustamante Museum
Negril & West Coast
Tiny Blenheim is the birthplace of national hero Alexander Bustamante, labor union hero and independent Jamaica’s first prime minister. ‘Busta’ is honored…
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
The former home of John Tharp, Jamaica's largest land and slave owner in the late 18th century, sits on a hill overlooking the estate. A Good Hope Estate…
Jamaica
This tiny, attractive, English-style ‘green’, also known as Mandeville Sq, lends a slight Cotswoldian village feel to the town center. In the middle of…
Kingston
The 30-hectare, oval-shaped National Heroes Park hosts National Heroes Circle, dedicated to Jamaica’s seven national heroes. Sir Alexander Bustamante,…
Croydon in the Mountains Plantation
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
Located 34km south of Montego Bay, off the potholed B6 road, this plantation can feel more like an Indian or Balinese rural community than Jamaica, with…
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
This is the sort of wonderful old place eccentrics dream of owning. In this case, said eccentric is Mr Joe James, father of former England and Liverpool…
Negril
Officially closed to the public, the 289-acre Royal Palm Reserve stretches along the southern side of the Great Morass, and consists of three distinct…
Montego Bay
This bustling, cobbled square is named for Samuel Sharpe (1801–32), national hero and leader of the 1831 Christmas Rebellion; it is also where he was…
Negril & West Coast
Around 10km northeast of Negril, this picturesque 220-hectare fruit-and-coconut plantation backs a small, attractive beach where hot mineral springs…
Jamaica
Virtually unnoticed by passers-by, this is a memorial to what came to be known as the Zong massacre – the throwing overboard of 133 African slaves by the…
Montego Bay
At the southwest corner of Sam Sharpe Sq you’ll find the copper-domed Civic Centre, an elegant colonial-style, cut-stone building on the site of a ruined…
William Knibb Baptist Memorial Church
Montego Bay & Northwest Coast
On July 31, 1838, slaves gathered outside this church for an all-night vigil, awaiting midnight and then the dawn of full freedom (to quote the emancipist…
