INSPIRE JAMAICA - The square that crowned an empire

Just a short drive west of Kingston, past the roundabouts and the rush of modern St Catherine, sits a square that once stood at the very centre of colonial power in the Caribbean. Historic Spanish Town Square is not simply an old plaza, it is the beating heart of Jamaica’s political past, home to some of the oldest surviving colonial-era architecture in the entire region.
Founded by the Spanish in the early 1500s as Villa de la Vega, the town later became Jamaica’s capital under British rule and remained so for more than 300 years, right up until 1872, when the seat of government finally moved to Kingston. For centuries, it was here, not in Kingston, that the island’s laws were debated, its fortunes decided, and its future shaped.
At the heart of the square stands the old House of Assembly, a striking red-brick structure that once housed Jamaica’s colonial legislature. Nearby rises a grand marble memorial to Admiral George Rodney, erected in 1783 to commemorate his naval victory at the Battle of the Saintes, a monument that speaks to the island’s deep entanglement in the imperial and military struggles of the era. Flanking the square are the remnants of the old King’s House, once the residence of Jamaica’s colonial governors, and the Cathedral of St Jago de la Vega, among the oldest cathedrals in the Western Hemisphere.
Walking through the square today, visitors move through layers of time: Spanish foundations beneath British façades, columns that have watched empires rise and fall, and cobblestones that carry the footsteps of governors, merchants, the enslaved, and the free. It is a place where architecture becomes memory, and memory becomes instruction.
Spanish Town Square reminds us that Jamaica’s story was never written quietly in the background, it was forged in rooms of power, contested in public squares, and carried forward by generations who refused to be erased from their own history.
As Jamaica and the world race forward, new roads, towers, and technologies will rise to define the age ahead. But progress built on infrastructure alone is incomplete. Without equal growth in our social and spiritual well-being, that imbalance becomes a sickness we will one day have to treat. Let us tend just as carefully to the values of the heart and spirit within ourselves, our families, and our wider world, so that what we build outward is matched by what we nurture within.

Contributed by Dr Lorenzo Gordon, a diabetologist, internal medicine consultant, biochemist, and a history and heritage enthusiast. Send feedback to inspiring876@gmail.com