The capital of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, a city of 16,500 residents, wraps around Kingstown Bay on the island's southwestern coast; a ring of green hills and ridges studded with homes forms a backdrop for the city. This is very much a working city, with a busy harbor and few concessions to tourists. Kingstown Harbour is the only deepwater port on the island.
A few gift shops can be found on and around Bay Street, near the harbor. Upper Bay Street, which stretches along the bayfront, bustles with daytime activity—workers going about their business and housewives doing their shopping. Many of Kingstown's downtown buildings are built of stone or brick brought to the island as ballast in the holds of 18th-century ships and replaced with sugar and spices for the return trip to Europe. The Georgian-style stone arches and second-floor overhangs on former warehouses—which provide shelter from midday sun and the brief, cooling showers common to the tropics—have earned Kingstown the nickname "City of Arches."
Grenadines Wharf, at the south end of Bay Street, is busy with ships loading supplies and ferries loading people bound for the Grenadines. The Cruise-Ship Complex, adjacent to the commercial wharf, has a mall with a dozen or more shops, plus restaurants, communications facilities, and a taxi stand.
A huge selection of produce fills the noisy, colorful Kingstown Market, a three-story building that takes up a whole city block on Upper Bay, Hillsboro, and Bedford Streets in the center of town. The market is open Monday through Saturday, but the busiest times (and the best times to go) are Friday and Saturday mornings. In the courtyard, vendors sell local arts and crafts. On the upper floors, merchants sell clothing, household items, gifts, and other products.
St. George's Cathedral, on Grenville Street, is a pristine, creamy yellow Anglican church built in 1820. The dignified Georgian architecture includes simple wooden pews, an ornate chandelier, and beautiful stained-glass windows; one was a gift from Queen Victoria, who actually commissioned it for London's St. Paul's Cathedral in honor of her first grandson. When the artist created an angel with a red robe, she was horrified by the color and sent the window abroad. The markers in the cathedral's graveyard recount the history of the island. Across the street is St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Assumption, built in stages beginning in 1823. The strangely appealing design is a blend of Moorish, Georgian, and Romanesque styles applied to black brick. Nearby, freed slaves built the Kingstown Methodist Church in 1841. The exterior is brick, simply decorated with quoins (solid blocks that form the corners), and the roof is held together by metal straps, bolts, and wooden pins. Scots Kirk was built from 1839 to 1880 by and for Scottish settlers but became a Seventh-Day Adventist church in 1952.
