Experience the best of St John's

St John's lies at the head of a deep natural harbour on the north-west coast of Antigua. The Cathedral of St John the Divine, dating from the 1840s, dominates the town with its two towers, and the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda, housed in an eighteenth-century courthouse, tells the island's story from its first settlers to independence. Fort James guards the harbour mouth, and Redcliffe Quay has been restored from old waterfront warehouses.

Antigua is only about twenty kilometres across, so the rest of the island is close. On the south coast the Georgian naval dockyard at English Harbour, a UNESCO site, shelters yachts beneath Shirley Heights, a lookout known for its sunsets. Betty's Hope keeps the stone windmills of a seventeenth-century sugar estate, Dickenson Bay has a popular beach north of town, and Devil's Bridge is a natural limestone arch pounded by Atlantic surf on the east coast.

Fungee, a cornmeal paste, and pepperpot, a stew of greens and meat, make up the national dish, while ducana, a sweet-potato dumpling, is eaten with saltfish. Antigua black pineapple is prized for its sweetness, and rum is poured at every beach bar. The dry months from December to April are the most settled, and Carnival fills the streets in high summer.