For all its beauty and charm. the Caribbean has had a lot of contentious periods, particularly once western nations began to colonize the islands. So you find a lot of forts and castles scattered around islands. Nassau in particular was once bristling with fortifications, the one we visited is a unique structure known as Fort Fincastle. On the way to Fort Fincastle you will walk on the Queen’s Staircase.
How to Get to Fort Fincastle using the Queen’s Staircase
We struggled with navigation in Nassau for some reason, so it took us a long time to find our way to Fort Fincastle, but it is actually very easy to find if you just look for the Queen’s Staircase first.
If you are leaving from the cruise terminal you just turn left down Bay Street and follow it until you get to Elizabeth Avenue (this is a little bit past the nice part of Bay Street and things will look a bit more rundown). Turn right onto Elizabeth Avenue and keep walking straight past the hospital. The road will kind of end (which is why it doesn’t show as going through on the GPS map) but you can just keep walking straight past the hospital until you see a jungle looking area with a footpath. That path will lead you to the Queen’s Staircase which will take you to Fort Fincastle.
What You Will See at the Queen’s Staircase
The Queen’s Staircase is a set of 65 steps next to a waterfall (there should be 66, but the path at the bottom has been raised). The guide at the steps told us there is a step for each year of Queen Victoria’s reign and the stairs are a monument built to her by freed African slaves to commemorate her freeing the slaves of the British Empire. Slaves had been forced to hew the passage through the rock where the stairs are now are.
What You Will See at Fort Fincastle
Interestingly, Fort Fincastle is not located directly on the port itself but on hill overlooking it. It was meant to be able to rain down cannon balls from this vantage point. What makes this fort particularly unique though is that the architect wanted to make it look nautical, so it has a wedge shaped front meant to make it look like a ship.
There is small booth next to Fort Fincastle where you can purchase your tickets ($3 + a tourist tax). You enter the fort through a door across from the ticket booth. Fort Fincastle is not accessible to wheelchairs or strollers and requires climbing a set of steep stairs immediately inside the door, but since you had to climb the Queen’s Stairs to get here, if you made it up to the fort you can probably handle what is inside.
The stairs open up on the cannon battery which is like an open air court. Lucy really enjoyed playing in this area. There are a few rooms you can go inside across from the cannons which have some information about the fort that you can read.
You can also go up a second set of stairs where you can look out across the island.
Sum Up
The Queen’s Staircase and Fort Fincastle are both worth seeing while you are visiting Nassau. The staircase won’t cost you anything and the fort is a very inexpensive historical site. Because the do require some physical activity I would suggest doing them earlier in the day before you hit the beaches and get tired.
