Devon House

George Stiebel was born in Kingston in 1820 to a German-Jewish father and a Jamaican housekeeper, went to sea, made a fortune in Venezuelan gold mining, and came home to build this: a two-storey Georgian-Caribbean mansion finished in 1881, and by most accounts the first black millionaire in the Caribbean. The house is furnished with a mix of original and period pieces and can be toured. What draws most of Kingston, though, is the courtyard behind it, where the old outbuildings have become shops, a bakery and an ice cream parlour whose flavours, soursop, devon stout, rum and raisin, are a national institution with a permanent queue.

What you actually see

• The house - Stiebel's 1881 mansion, furnished and open to tour.
• The ice cream - soursop, stout and rum and raisin, queued for daily.
• The courtyard shops - craft, bakery and food in the old outbuildings.
• The grounds - lawns and trees in the middle of uptown Kingston.

When to go

Year-round. The grounds are open daily and busiest at weekends and on Sunday afternoons, when Kingston families fill the lawns. House tours run at set times on weekdays and Saturdays. The ice cream queue is shortest early.

Honest expectations

The house tour is short and the furnishings are largely period rather than original to Stiebel. Most visitors come for the ice cream and the courtyard rather than the history, and at weekends parking is difficult and the queues are long. The shops are aimed squarely at visitors and priced for it.

Nearby

Bob Marley Museum is ten minutes; Hope Gardens are fifteen minutes east.