What to see and do in New Amsterdam — a visitor’s guide

New Amsterdam is not a resort town and has never pretended to be. It is the capital of Berbice, a working town of about 14,762 people at the 2022 census, sitting on the east bank of the Berbice River a few miles up from the Atlantic — and it is one of the oldest and most architecturally interesting places in Guyana.

You can see the centre of it in a morning on foot. Here is what is actually there.

First, a little orientation

The town you are standing in is the second New Amsterdam. The first was a settlement that grew up around Fort Nassau, roughly 80 kilometres up the Berbice River, from about 1733. The Dutch abandoned that site in 1785 and moved downstream to the confluence of the Berbice and Canje rivers, where Fort Sint Andries had been built in 1740. Work on the present town began around 1790, and it became a municipality on 1 September 1891.

Almost everything worth seeing is within a rectangle bounded by Main Street, Strand Street, Chapel Street and the Esplanade. Take a hat. Take water. Start early — by eleven the sun is unkind.

The Town Hall

Lot 14 Strand Street. A two-storey timber building of about 1868, with a tower of roughly seventy-five feet, Tudor influences in the detailing, and a council chamber, concert hall and gallery along the eastern wing. It is a national monument, and it is the single most photographed building in Berbice for good reason — it is a serious piece of colonial timber architecture, in a country that has lost a great many of them to fire.

Look at it from across the street to see the proportions. The tower is the thing.

The market

Below and beside the Town Hall sits the municipal market — roughly 26,400 square feet of it, and the reason most people are in this part of town on any given morning.

Go early, ideally on a Saturday. This is where you see Berbice actually working: ground provisions, greens, fish and shrimp brought up from the river and the coast, spices, and the general noise of a market that has been in the same place for a very long time. Bring small notes. Ask before photographing people.

If you only do one thing in New Amsterdam, do this. It is more informative than any monument.

Mission Chapel Congregational Church

Lot 12 Chapel Street. The most historically significant building in the town, and the one that most visitors walk past.

The Reverend John Wray, of the London Missionary Society, bought Lot 12 on 31 December 1818, and the first Mission Chapel was completed and consecrated in February 1819. It was the first church in the colony to open its doors to the enslaved, and the first without separate seating.

The first chapel was destroyed by arson in August 1823. A second was re-dedicated in June 1825. The foundation of the third and present building was laid in 1841 under the Reverend Ebenezer Davies, Wray’s son-in-law. It was designated a monument in 1966 and marked its bicentenary in 2019.

Stand in it for a moment. In 1819, in a slave colony, this room was the only one in Berbice where seating was not divided.

All Saints Scots Church

Princess Elizabeth Road. Completed by 8 April 1820, and another national monument — a single-storey timber structure with a tower and pointed arched windows, and one of the very few buildings in New Amsterdam with a public clock on its façade.

Its origin is a small piece of colonial diplomacy: in 1818 the Governor was petitioned for a church in which the Dutch and English congregations could worship together. As the Dutch population declined, the Scots took it over.

A point of confusion worth avoiding: there is a separate All Saints Anglican Church in New Amsterdam, with its own listing. They are different buildings with similar names.

The Berbice High Court

Corner of Esplanade and Vryheid Roads, at the north-western tip of the town.

The present building was begun on 27 November 1975, completed on 22 December 1988 and officially opened in February 1989. It stands on the site of Colony House, built between 1818 and 1820 by John Carruthers and Sons, carpenters, for 47,400 guilders — a building that served as courtroom, town hall and accommodation for members of the Court all at once.

You cannot wander in, but the site is worth standing on. Two hundred years of Berbice justice have been administered from this corner.

The Esplanade

West of Esplanade Road, at the north-western tip of town by the river. Historically a picnicking ground, with an old band stand for open-air concerts. In the early 1990s the Mayor and Town Council, with the Rotary Club of New Amsterdam, redeveloped it as the Esplanade Recreational Park and Botanical Gardens.

Go at the end of the afternoon. It is where the town goes to catch the breeze off the river, and it is the best light of the day.

The Berbice River Bridge

You will almost certainly have crossed it to get here, but it is worth a second look.

The bridge opened on 23 December 2008. It is a floating pontoon bridge, about 1,570 metres long, on 39 pontoons, with 37 spans of bridging. Two of the spans retract to open a 70-metre channel for large vessels — a manoeuvre that takes about eight minutes — and a raised high-clearance section lets smaller craft through without stopping traffic. It connects D’Edward Village near Rosignol on the west bank with Crab Island on the east.

Before it existed, the crossing was a ferry from the Rosignol Stelling that could take anywhere from forty-five minutes to two hours. The bridge does it in two or three.

Tolls have been abolished. All major bridges in Guyana, including this one, became toll-free from 1 August 2025. Any guidebook that tells you to budget for a Berbice Bridge toll is out of date.

What is not here — two useful corrections

The 1763 Monument is not in Berbice. Philip Moore’s statue of Cuffy stands on the Square of the Revolution in Georgetown, unveiled on 23 May 1976. This is a genuine oddity: the monument to the Berbice rebellion is a hundred kilometres from Berbice.

The rebellion itself very much happened here. It began on 23 February 1763 at plantation Magdalenenberg on the Canje River, spread up the Berbice River, and Cuffy declared himself Governor of Berbice. Guyana’s Republic Day is 23 February because of it.

Fort Nassau is not in New Amsterdam. The ruins are roughly 80 kilometres up the Berbice River, on the right bank near Torani Creek — a boat trip, not a walk. The fort was established around 1627, destroyed by the French in 1712, rebuilt, and razed in 1763 on the Governor’s orders to keep it from the rebels. It was abandoned in 1785 and declared a national monument in 1999. Only ruins remain. If you want to go, arrange it locally and allow a full day.

Fort Canje is a district on the Canje River just south of town — it holds the National Psychiatric Hospital and the regional hospital, not a fort you can visit.

A realistic half-day

1. Start at the market, early.
2. Walk to the Town Hall next door; look at it properly from across Strand Street.
3. Walk to Mission Chapel on Chapel Street.
4. Continue to All Saints Scots Church on Princess Elizabeth Road.
5. Walk out to the Esplanade and the river, and along past the High Court corner.
6. Eat. Then, in the late afternoon, go back to the Esplanade for the breeze.

That is New Amsterdam. It will not take you a week, and it does not want to. What it will give you is a town that has been continuously inhabited, argued over, burnt down and rebuilt for two hundred and thirty years — and which still keeps its market under its town hall.

For getting here, see our guide to travelling to Berbice. For somewhere to sleep, see where to stay in New Amsterdam.