Port of Spain turns around a grass oval.
A hundred and ten hectares of grass with a three-and-a-half-kilometre road around them, bought in 1817 when they were still a cane field. The whole capital takes its bearings from that void.
01 From cane field to pasture to park
The land was a sugar plantation. In 1817 the town bought it from the Peschier family, who kept a small family cemetery inside it, and what had been a cultivated field became pasture for cattle.
That origin explains its shape. It is not a park designed with avenues and flowerbeds but an open, practically flat surface, with no structure beyond the scattered trees that grew later.
The city grew around it without encroaching, and today the oval is the void that organises everything else: to the south lies the commercial and administrative centre, to the north and west the residential districts.
02 A 110-hectare roundabout
The figures are what support the claim. The area is around 110 hectares, some 260 acres, and the road that rings it measures about three and a half kilometres, all of it one-way.
Driving it is the fastest way to understand the city. All the traffic of the northern capital passes through that ring, and directions are given according to which point of the oval you are at.
For a pedestrian the effect is different and better. From inside you do not see a roundabout: you see an enormous open field with the northern mountains behind and the city reduced to a low line on the horizon.
03 The seven houses on the western edge
On the western side, in a row facing the park, stand the seven houses the city calls the Magnificent Seven. They were built in the early twentieth century, at the height of the cocoa money, and each chose a different style.
There is a stone castle with turrets, a timber house with carved fretwork, a building with a French colonial air and a school with a clock tower. Seen together they look like an architectural catalogue raised at once by neighbours in competition.
Their state of repair is uneven and some have been under works for years. Even so, walking that pavement is the most interesting urban stroll in the capital, and it takes twenty minutes.
04 What it is used for
The oval is not decorative: it gets used. At weekends it fills with football and cricket matches at once, with no painted lines and no fixed goals, and in the late afternoon with people walking the perimeter.
On its southern side stands the stage where the calendar's big events are held, including the final of the steelband competition. During those weeks the park becomes the country's largest venue.
The rest of the year it goes back to what it was: an open field with trees where the city breathes. That alternation between empty and full is what makes it different from an ordinary park.
05 The city explains itself from the oval
Port of Spain has been the capital since 1757, when the seat of government moved from San José de Oruña, inland, which had fallen into disrepair. Since then the city has reclaimed land from the sea several times to make room for the port.
That gives a clear structure: port and downtown below, beside the water; the green oval in the middle; and the neighbourhoods climbing the northern slopes. With those three elements you can find your way without a map.
The city proper has barely over thirty-seven thousand inhabitants, but its metropolitan area is around half a million. In other words: almost nobody lives downtown and almost everybody passes through it.
