Alexander Hamilton's birthplace — sugar windmill ruins, Four Seasons luxury, and Pinney's Beach unhurried
Charlestown is the diminutive capital of Nevis — a perfectly round volcanic island of 36 square kilometres in the northern Leeward Islands that produces some of the Caribbean's most quietly luxurious experiences. The island is most famous internationally as the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757), first US Treasury Secretary, and the Hamilton Museum in the house where he was born is a place of genuine pilgrimage since Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical. Beyond that connection, Nevis is an island of beautifully restored plantation great houses turned boutique hotels, approximately 40 sur…
Nevis was one of the most valuable sugar-producing islands in the British Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries — tiny in area but producing enormous quantities of Muscovado sugar using the labour of thousands of enslaved Africans. Alexander Hamilton was born in Charlestown and emigrated to New York in 1772; the birthplace museum was comprehensively renovated in 2019. Nevis and neighbouring St. Kitts became an independent state within the Commonwealth in 1983 — the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere by both area and population.