General History of Willemstad, World Heritage City

please be patient while down loading pictures and description (45 sec. over 28.8)

GENERAL HISTORY OF WILLEMSTAD,

CURAÇAO, N.A.

HISTORIC AREA, INNER CITY AND HARBOUR

Map of groundplan of Willemstad and Fort Amsterdam 1742

(Defenceworks, Royal Archives, no. 1444, The Hague NL)

Willemstad is the capital of the Island of Curaçao (an area of some 450 square kilometers) and is also the seat of the Government of the Netherlands Antilles.

Like all other Caribbean societies, that on Curaçao owes its origin to the expansion of Europe in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Spain and Portugal provided the initial impetus, to be followed by England, France and The Netherlands.

2001 - The maintainence of this site is sponsored by DDI - Design&Development Intl.

Map of Groundplan Willemstad, 1748 (source: Royal Archives, The Hague NL)

After Spain had encroached upon the island of Curaçao in 1499 at the expense of the Arawak Indians, the island's native inhabitants, the Dutch took possession of it in 1634, in the period of Dutch domination of trade and the seas (approx. 1600 - 1800). With two brief intermissions of British occupation of Curaçao in 1800 - 1803 and 1807 - 1816, the island has stayed Dutch colonial territory since, until the Netherlands Antilles acquired self-government within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954.

New societies arose and bear the imprint of the culture of the colonizing power, culture in the broadest sense of the term, i.e., including legislation and governmental organization and also in the field of architecture.

Like Havana and San Juan de Puerto Rico, Willemstad is a typical port town. However, it is one without a hinterland, focusing on trade with the surrounding colonies, mainly the Spanish colonies on the South American continental coast, but also with French and English colonies.

"Map Ninaber" of Willemstad 1830. The eastern defencewall was a proposal, but is never built. (Royal Archives, The Hague NL)		Frequent trade with South America, then called the Spanish Main, led not only to the exchange of goods but to the reciprocal adoption of cultural elements. Curaçao, a Dutch colony, therefore has an Iberian tinge as well, e.g. visible in the Penha Building. Some of the colonists were also Iberian, at least by origin. This mainly refers to Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain and Portugal, who came to Curaçao by way of Amsterdam and settled there in the mid Seventeenth Century.
Curaçao also experienced slavery and was even a center of the slave trade for a time. Some of the slaves who were traded remained on Curaçao. We may therefore say that culturally Curaçao has been shaped by the intensive exchange of cultural elements between Northern Europeans, Iberians and Africans. Even today we encounter typical Dutch and Iberian influences in the culture and in addition we also find very clear South-American and African influences. As a result, a colorful urban architecture and a specific town structure developed subsequently in the districts of the Historic Area of Willemstad.
View on Willemstad and harbour from the Otrabanda side, anno 1900 (source: Library of the Petrus Donders Friary, Tilburg NL)