The Danish Legacy

Denmark held these islands from the seventeenth century until selling them to the United States in 1917, and the traces are everywhere once you notice them. Towns are laid out on Danish grids with streets named Kongens Gade and Dronningens Gade. Buildings use yellow brick that came out as ship ballast, and the arcaded pavements of Christiansted were a Danish ordinance against the sun. Estate names on both islands are Danish or Dutch. Transfer Day on the thirty-first of March is a public holiday. And the islands drive on the left, which is not a Danish inheritance at all but a British colonial one that simply never changed.

What you actually see

• Danish street names - Kongens Gade and Dronningens Gade in all three towns.
• Yellow ballast brick - European brick used throughout the old towns.
• Christiansted's arcades - the shaded pavements required by Danish ordinance.
• Transfer Day - 31 March, marking the 1917 sale to the United States.

When to go

Year-round. Transfer Day on the thirty-first of March is marked with events, and Emancipation Day on the third of July commemorates the 1848 abolition. The historic districts of Christiansted and Charlotte Amalie are walkable at any time.

Honest expectations

The Danish period was built on sugar and on enslaved labour, and the architectural legacy that is admired was produced by it; the towns' interpretation of this varies from thorough to absent depending on the site. Driving on the left in left-hand-drive cars catches out almost every visitor, particularly at junctions and roundabouts.

Nearby

Christiansted and Frederiksted on St Croix; Charlotte Amalie on St Thomas.