Photo: UpstateNYer (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A self-guided audio tour of Castries, the town the French called Carénage after its sheltered harbour, in an island that changed hands between France and Britain fourteen times. It starts at the harbour, with the night in 1942 when a German submarine sank two Allied ships here, and goes on through La Place Carenage, the Central Market opened in 1894 on old coal heaps, and the bust of the Marquis de Castries. In the centre are Derek Walcott Square, with busts of Saint Lucia's two Nobel laureates and the poem Walcott wrote at eighteen after the Great Fire of 1948, the cathedral basilica with Dunstan St. Omer's murals, the surviving wooden facades of Brazil Street and Constitution Park. Then, by road up Morne Fortune: Government House, Fort Charlotte, where the Brigands' War and the battle of 1796 are told, the four restored guns of the Apostles' Battery, and the graves of Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott. Ships berth at Pointe Seraphine, on the north side of the harbour, or at La Place Carenage in the town itself.
12 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 120 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 3 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Pointe Seraphine Cruise Pier, La Place Carenage, Castries Central Market, Statue of the Marquis de Castries.
Derek Walcott Square, Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Brazil Street, Constitution Park.
Government House, Fort Charlotte, Apostles' Battery, Sir Arthur Lewis Burial Ground.
Built by Liverpool engineers on a site once covered in coal heaps, opened in 1894 and almost unchanged, with its original fountain still working.
The town's central square, with bronze busts of Derek Walcott and Arthur Lewis and a Samaan tree estimated at more than 400 years old.
Built from 1894 under a wooden roof, its walls, vault and columns painted with biblical scenes by Dunstan St. Omer.
Surviving 19th-century buildings with pastel wooden facades and lattice balconies, in a town rebuilt again and again after fires.
The hilltop fort fought over in the Brigands' War and stormed by British troops in May 1796, its buildings now part of a college.
Four nine-inch rifled guns of 1892, each about four metres long, restored in 2015 and named after the four evangelists.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 12 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 12 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Castries — Derek Walcott Square and Morne Fortune, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
12 narration points, including Pointe Seraphine Cruise Pier, Castries Central Market, Derek Walcott Square, Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and Government House. That is about 13 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 12 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.