The National Museum

The museum occupies Guinep House, a stone building of around 1840 on Front Street, and its centrepiece is the Molasses Reef wreck: a small ship that went down on the Caicos Bank early in the sixteenth century, excavated in the 1980s and the oldest European shipwreck yet excavated in the Americas. It carried no treasure and its cargo was chains, shackles and weapons, which tells its own story about what these ships were doing. Around it are Lucayan artefacts, the salt industry, the John Glenn splashdown that brought the first American orbital flight down off Grand Turk in 1962, and the natural history of the islands.

Highlights

• The Molasses Reef wreck - the oldest excavated European wreck in the Americas.
• The Lucayan collection - artefacts from the islands' first inhabitants.
• The salt industry displays - the trade the islands lived on for centuries.
• The John Glenn splashdown - the 1962 recovery off Grand Turk.

When to go

Year-round; hours are limited and it closes at weekends in some periods, so check before walking down. Cruise days bring groups. Two hours covers it.

Practical notes

It is small and opening hours have been irregular, particularly since the hurricanes; confirm before going. The building was damaged in 2017 and repairs took years. Displays are modest and funding is clearly limited. There is a second, smaller site on Providenciales.

Nearby

Cockburn Town is around it; the lighthouse is at the island's northern end.