What you can see on the Spanish Town cam
The camera looks down on a street corner in the commercial centre of town, over the roofs of market stalls, to a row of modern shop buildings with their signs and billboards. Vans and route taxis come and go, and people walk between the shops and the stalls through the day.
A busy corner of Spanish Town
Mounted high above a street corner in the commercial centre of Spanish Town, this camera looks over the white roofs of market stalls to a row of modern shop buildings with their signs and billboards, a mobile phone shop and a bank among them. Vans and route taxis pull in and out, and shoppers cross between the stalls. The camera turns, and another view looks along a street of market stalls under bright umbrellas beside a supermarket.
It shows the pulse of the old capital through the day, from the morning rush to the evening, and the weather over St Catherine.
The old capital
The Spanish called the town Villa de la Vega; the English, who took Jamaica in 1655, kept it as their capital and named it St Jago de la Vega. Its old square, Emancipation Square, is lined with Georgian buildings, among them the old House of Assembly and the Rodney Memorial, and the Cathedral of St Jago de la Vega, on the site of a Spanish chapel, is one of the oldest Anglican cathedrals outside England.
When to watch Spanish Town
Jamaica keeps the same time as Cancun all year, five hours behind UTC. The streets are busiest in the morning and late afternoon, with commuters to and from Kingston, and on market days. The hurricane season runs from June to November.
Nearby
Kingston is about half an hour away by road. The Rio Cobre runs past the town, through the gorge of Bog Walk to the north, and the beaches of Hellshire, popular with Kingstonians for fried fish and festival on Sundays, are to the south.
Getting there
Spanish Town lies on the highway between Kingston and the west and north of the island. Route taxis and buses link it with Kingston. Cars drive on the left.
