Curaçao, just 30 miles from Venezuela, is an autonomous country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. With its typically narrow, if brightly coloured, gabled homes lined up in neat rows, it certainly looks like a little bit of Holland in the middle of the Caribbean, but it’s a multicultural island where seemingly everyone speaks three or four languages, often in one sentence. The island’s official languages are Dutch and Papiamento—an Afro-Portuguese Creole which also incorporates Spanish, Dutch, English, Hebrew, and Arawak Indian words and embodies Curaçao’s layered history.  

Exploring these museums and places will give visitors an idea just how much Curaçao’s past shapes this constantly evolving and fascinating southwestern Caribbean island.

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Parts of this trip were hosted by Curaçao Tourism, who did not review or approve this story.

Fort Amsterdam

In 1634, a Dutch fleet conquered the coast of Curaçao and took control of it from the Spanish. The Spaniards had already named arid Curaçao and its neighbouring islands, Las Islas Inútiles (useless islands), because they believed that nothing could grow on them. But the Dutch saw Curaçao’s location as a strategic benefit and built Fort Amsterdam at Saint Anna as a barrier against enemies and pirates. After a truce with the Spanish, the Dutch turned their attention from military campaigns to trade, seeing the port as the perfect base between New York (then known as New Amsterdam) and South America.

The Dutch West India Company quickly developed a monopoly on sea trade routes and became immensely wealthy, dealing in goods, and the equally lucrative, but morally bankrupt, human trade. Curaçao was used as a slave depot, where people, taken from Africa, were brought before being sent to the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and French colonies, until 1788, when the last ship of captive people arrived on the island. In later years, the Fort resumed its role as a strategic location, including during World War II. Today, Fort Amsterdam is home to the island’s Parliament and the official residence of the governor. The Fort is built around a spacious quadrangle courtyard, its buildings painted in the vibrant yellow that is ubiquitous around the island. The only building that can be visited is Fort Church, home of the first Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands Antilles. It dates back to 1769. Within its walls are the original pulpit, the governor’s pew, and a small museum with historic artefacts belonging to the Church’s congregation. The lure for the history lover is walking around the buildings and getting a real sense of where Curaçao’s long European history all began.

Savonet Plantation Museum

Located within the Christoffelpark, the island’s largest nature reserve, and a popular spot for hikers, sits the Savonet Plantation, one of many former landhuizen around the island. The big house and outbuilding were turned into an ambitious museum complex in 2016. The Savonet Museum’s idea is to tie all the threads of the textured fabric of Curaçao together – the relationship between its people and its flora and fauna, its archeology and with each other.

The story starts with the arrival of the Caiquieto Indians of the Arawak tribe, who migrated north from South America some 6,000 years ago and ends with a gallery of contemporary photos of descendants of many cultures. There’s a whole lot of history in between, from military campaigns to the arrival of a Shell oil distillery to the labour and race riots known as the 1960 May Revolt to the country’s autonomy in 2010.  Antiques and artefacts displayed in the Main house’s bright, airy and well-restored rooms visually bring all these chapters to life, while videos offering personal stories, songs and historical analysis add extra layers of information. But, given the museum’s location, it’s natural that the main focus would be the plantation house itself, and the people who worked on it, and the people who lived off their backs. Exhibits detailing the structure of plantation society, lives and customs of owners and labourers during slavery, after abolition and well into the 20th century is intimately told.

Afro-Curaçaoan History

Afro-Curaçaoan history is largely defined by the brutal reality of slavery. But it is also one of pride and resilience. Most of Curaçao’s black population is descended from Africans who were captured and forced into labour that created the island’s prosperous economy. Curaçao’s involvement in the slave trade is told through several powerful museums, including The Kura Hulanda. The museum documents the torturous period, though a chilling collection of instruments of captivity, and delves into the legacy of post-abolition racism through words and artefacts. Kura Hulanda’s location is jarring: It’s on the site of a luxury resort of the same name, and was supposedly built to facilitate funding for the property by adding a cultural attraction. Completely incongruous, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s one of the island’s most worthy cultural institutions.

Another is the Museo Tula. You might have seen the movie The Revolt: Tula, starring Danny Glover, about the month-long 1795 slave revolt begun by an enslaved man named Tula. The museum devoted to his story (set in the landhuis where the revolt took place) lays out how Tula travelled from plantation to plantation trying to liberate other enslaved people before being caught and tortured to death. Tula’s legacy is further commemorated with a statue along the waterfront in Willemstad, the island’s capital, and in the gentrified district of Pietermaai, where an innovative urban planning project entitled Tula’s Hand symbolises regrowth.

The indelible Afro-Curaçaoan culture is felt in the island’s cuisine (Curaçao’s national dish is keshi yená, a blend of chicken, vegetables, spices and raisins baked in the rind of Edam cheese, a dish that had its origins in the slave kitchens). It is felt in the vibrant murals of  Pietermaai, which have helped make Willemstad an art city; in the sounds of Tumba music with its influences of Bantu culture and jazz; and in the labour and race riots of 1960 that began to upend the uneven social structure.

Jewish Curaçao 

Past thick mahogany doors lies Mikvé Israel Emanuel—the oldest continuously operating synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. The ornate structure spreads across a full city block in the centre of Willemstad, and was built at a time when thirty per cent of the counted population of Curaçao was Jewish.

Their story began in the 1650s, with the arrival of Sephardic Jews from Amsterdam, who had previously fled Spain and Portugal at the time of the Inquisition. You can’t help but notice the synagogue’s floor is carpeted in sand. This is to commemorate the time during the Inquisition when forcibly converted Iberian Jews used sand to muffle the sound of Hebrew prayer. Adjacent to the synagogue is the Jewish Cultural and Historical Museum, which houses a Torah from 1300s Spain, and a letter from George Washington to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, granting them religious freedom and the right to erect the first synagogue in the U.S. The connection? The first congregants of the 1763 Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island were emigrants from Curaçao. To this day, the Jews of Newport say a prayer of thanks to the Curaçao Jews for helping to build the synagogue on American soil.

Landhuis Chobolobo, where the famous Curaçao blue liqueur is produced, is also worth visiting for those exploring the island’s Jewish history. The liqueur was developed by the Jewish Senior family in 1886, and the distillery has an exhibition displaying a historical timeline of the Jews of Curaçao. The Beit Chaim cemetery, consecrated in 1659,  is known for its elaborate tombstones and counts the remains of Rebecca Spinoza (d 1695), the sister of the great Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, among its buried.

The Handelskade

The narrow, gabled, multi-hued buildings that line the Handelskade (or Waterfront) in Willemstad look like someone took a box of coloured pencils to Amsterdam’s canal houses. The buildings are painted bright colours, because, the story goes, a 17th-century governor blamed the reflection of the strong sun on the formerly all-white buildings for his chronic migraines (dig deeper and you’ll find the man owned a paint factory).

These 17th-century structures were the homes and warehouses of the Dutch and Jewish merchants who helped Curaçao flourish and become a wealthy island (today, they’re mostly shops and offices). The Handelskade is part of Willemstad’s 1997 UNESCO World Heritage Historic City designation,  a source of pride for islanders and delight for Instagrammers. The Plaza Hotel Curaçao, one of the island’s tallest buildings, has recently changed ownership, and its future is unclear at the moment. But if it’s open and there’s a chance to get in and up to the top floor, grab it. You’ll get a sweeping view of the red tiled rooftops and the grid layout, which gives a good idea of what a 17th-century Dutch-designed city, including the original New York,  looked like. You can also see how Breedestraat (Broadway) cuts through Willemstad the way it does in New York.

Modern Architecture

Besides the Handelskade, Curaçao, has some striking architecture. The island is home to some of the Caribbean’s coolest modernism. There are all the bright, happy villas in the historic Scharloo district, buildings that house serious businesses like banks and government offices and look like iced birthday cakes.  Dutch modernist icon Gerrit Reitveld spent time in Curaçao, and left behind, among other things, a de Stijl movement transformer station, as well as private homes that are culturally sensitive de Stijl movement spaces adapted to a Caribbean climate. In the once neglected revamped Pietermaai district you’ll find examples of cool modernism and European Nieuwe Bouwen buildings.   

Where to stay in Curaçao

The  Renaissance Curaçao Resort & Casino, is a sleek, modern hotel set within a historic fort in Willemstad, near the Punta shopping neighbourhood and the nightlife of Pietermaai. The property’s calming, vibrant colours showcase the island’s love for art..

Papagayo Design Hotel, located on Curaçao’s lively Jan Thiels beach, feels very Holland in the Tropics with a good dose of Saint Tropez thrown in. Minimalist design rooms are spread over several buildings, with terraces overlooking the sea and landscape.

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