Museum sights in Jamaica
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Bob Marley Museum
For many, Jamaica means reggae, and reggae means Bob Marley. If this sounds like you, a visit to Kingston definitely means a visit to the reggae superstar’s former home and studio. The creaky wooden house on Hope Rd where Marley once lived and recorded is the city’s most-visited site. Today the house functions as a tourist attraction, museum and shrine, but much remains as it was during Marley’s day. The house is guarded by a sentry of faithful Rasta brethren and sisters and shielded by a vibrantly painted wall festooned with Rastafarian murals. Dominating the forecourt is a gaily colored statue of the musical legend. Some of the guides are overly solemn (focusing with …
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Marshall's Pen Great House
This impressive stone-and-timber great house, built in 1795, stands among beautifully landscaped gardens on a former coffee plantation turned cattle-breeding property on the northwest side of town. The 120-hectare property is owned by Jamaica’s leading ornithologist, Robert Sutton, and Anne Sutton, an environmental scientist. Robert can trace his ancestry to the first child born to English parents in Jamaica in 1655. The Suttons’ home has wood-paneled rooms brimming with antiques, leather-bound books, artwork and many other museum-quality pieces. You can tour the mini-museum by appointment only. Marshall’s Pen is splendid for birding: more than 100 species have b…
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Trench Town Museum
Trench Town, which began life as a much-prized housing project erected by the British in the 1930s, is widely credited as the birthplace of ska, rocksteady and reggae music. The neighborhood has been immortalized in the gritty narratives of numerous reggae songs, not the least of which is Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry, the poignant Trench Town anthem penned by Vincent ‘Tata’ Ford in a tiny bedroom at what is now the Trench Town Museum. In the days before superstardom, Bob and Rita Marley were frequent visitors and for a time even kept a small bedroom here. The museum is stocked with Wailers memorabilia, including Marley’s first guitar, some poignant photographs from …
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Nine Mile Museum
The small community where the ‘King of Reggae’ was born on February 6, 1945, is set dramatically in the midst of the Cockpits. Despite its isolated location 60km south of Ocho Rios, the village of Nine Mile is decidedly on beaten path for pilgrimages to Bob Marley’s birth site and resting place. At the Nine Mile Museum, Rastafarian guides given to impromptu singing of Marley’s songs lead pilgrims to the hut – now festooned with devotional graffiti – where the reggae god spent his early years before moving to Kingston and where you’ll see the single bed he sang of in ‘Is This Love.’ Another highlight is the Rasta-colored ‘rock pillow’ on which lay his head when seeki…
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People’s Museum of Crafts & Technology
On the west side of Parade Square is the porticoed Georgian redbrick facade of the ruins of the Old King’s House, a once-grandiose building erected in 1762 as the official residence of Jamaica’s governors. The building was destroyed by fire in 1925, leaving only the restored facade. Today the stables, to the rear, house the People’s Museum of Crafts & Technology. A reconstructed smith’s shop and an eclectic array of artifacts – from Indian corn grinders to coffee-making machinery – provide an entry point to early Jamaican culture. A model shows how Old King’s House once looked.
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Maritime Museum
The marvelous Maritime Museum stands in the courtyard and contains a miscellany of things nautical from the heyday of the Royal Navy, plus a fabulous model of the Jamaica Producer cargo ship. Nelson lived in the small 'cockpit' while stationed here, and his quarters are replicated. Also of interest is a platform known as Nelson's Quarterdeck.
It was here that the young Horatio Nelson was said to keep watch for enemy ships, and once you climb to the top you'll agree that it does offer a splendid vantage point. A plaque on the wall of the King's Battery, to the right of the main entrance of the museum, commemorates his time here.
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Reggae Xplosion Museum
This impressive museum provides an excellent presentation of the grand lineage of Jamaican music, from ancient African drumming to the futuristic digital rhythms of dancehall. The self-billed ‘interactive reggae experience’ is divided into mento, ska, reggae, dancehall and other sections, including one commemorating Bob Marley. It features posters, photographs and videos. Headphones let you listen to sounds of each era. There’s even a makeshift artists’ recording studio with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s original sound-gear. The entrance fee includes a guided tour.
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White Marl Taino Museum
Jamaica owes much to the influence of the Arawak Indians, whose history is on display at this meager museum atop a large pre-Columbian settlement. Archaeological research has been ongoing here since the 1940s. Hunting and agricultural implements, jewelry and carvings are featured. A reconstructed Arawak village is up the hill behind the museum. The museum is 200m north of the A1, about 3km east of Spanish Town. Don’t try to walk there; instead drive or take a taxi from the taxi stand east of Spanish Town’s bus terminal.
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Accompong Community Centre & Museum
Opposite the monument to Cudjoe, the Accompong Community Centre & Museum contains a motley miscellany of goombay drums, a musket, a sword, baskets and other artifacts from the Maroon era. Entry is included only as part of a community tour, which takes in a Maroon burial ground, a small herbal garden and the Kindah Tree, a stately mango tree, where the elders of the community congregate and which is considered sacred. If the museum's closed, call Mark Wright for a quick whip round the village.
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Sir Alexander Bustamante Museum
The tiny hamlet of Blenheim, 6km inland of Davis Cove, is important as the birthplace of national hero Alexander Bustamante, the island’s first prime minister. ‘Busta’ is honored with a memorial ceremony each August 6. The rustic three-room wooden shack where Bustamante was born has been reconstructed as the Sir Alexander Bustamante Museum. It includes memorabilia telling of the hero’s life. It has public toilets and a picnic area to the rear.
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African-Caribbean Heritage Centre
Presided over by the Institute of Jamaica, the Heritage Centre houses a library and a small yet informative gallery that is dedicated to the history of the Middle Passage and a sociocultural exploration of the African diaspora. It is also home to the Memory Bank, an engrossing oral-history archive created to preserve Jamaica’s rich folkloric traditions. The center also stages cultural events from lectures and symposia to readings and dance performance.
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Columbus Park
This open-air roadside museum sits atop the bluff on the west side of Discovery Bay. Highlighted by a mural depicting Columbus’s arrival in Jamaica, the eclectic museum features such memorabilia as anchors, cannons, nautical bells, sugar-boiling coppers and an old waterwheel in working condition that creaks and clanks as it turns. There’s also a diminutive locomotive formerly used to haul sugar at Innswood Estate.
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Coyaba Museum
Coyaba is an Arawak word for ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise.’ The Coyaba Museum traces Jamaica’s heritage from early Arawak days to independence. There’s a gift store, vegetarian restaurant, waterfall and art gallery. Coyaba is just shy of 2km west of St John’s Church (on the A3), not far from Shaw Park Gardens; follow the signs. Admission includes a 30-minute guided tour.
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Institute of Jamaica
Toward the south end of East St, the Institute of Jamaica is the nation’s small-scale equivalent of the British Museum or Smithsonian. The institute hosts permanent and visiting exhibitions, and features a lecture hall, plus the National Library with Jamaican newspapers and texts dating back more than two centuries.
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Museum of Coins and Notes
The Bank of Jamaica, the national mint and treasury at the east end of Ocean Blvd, is fronted by a tall concrete statue of Noel ‘Crab’ Nethersole (minister of finance from 1955 to 1969). Inside the bank building you’ll find a small Museum of Coins and Notes displaying Jamaican currency through the centuries.
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Hanover Museum
A side road that begins 200m west of the church leads to the Hanover Museum, a tiny affair housed in an old police barracks. Exhibits include prisoners’ stocks, a wooden bathtub and a miscellany of pots, lead weights and measures. It also has a tiny gift shop, toilets and a snack bar.
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Zabai Tabai Taino Museum
The Zabai Tabai Taino Museum, on the main road, is an offbeat museum celebrating the Taino culture. Many of the artifacts were dug up on the owner’s property, which has a cave with what are purportedly Taino paintings that glow translucent in winter. The museum has no set hours.
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Natural History Museum
In the same building as the Institute of Jamaice, but accessed by a separate entrance around the corner on Tower St, is the Natural History Museum. The dowdy collection offers an array of stuffed birds and a herbarium, rounded out by an eclectic miscellany playing a historical note.
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Museum of St James
In the Civic Centre is the small yet highly informative Museum of St James with relics and other exhibits tracing the history of St James parish from Arawak days through the slave rebellions to the more recent past. An art gallery and 200-seat theater are also here.
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Coyaba River Garden
Coyaba River Garden is a paradise with walk-ways and trails leading through lush gardens with streams, cascades and pools filled with carp, crayfish and turtles. Coyaba is an Arawak word for 'heaven' or 'paradise.'
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