Top Attractions

The Willemstad estate where the original bright-blue Curaçao liqueur is still made, distilled from the dried peel of the island's Laraha orange. Tours and tastings on site.

One of the largest ostrich farms outside Africa, at Groot Sint Joris in the east. Open-vehicle safari tours run among the birds, with feeding, egg displays, and a restaurant.

A sea aquarium and marine park at Bapor Kibra on the southeast coast, with reef tanks, an open-water lagoon, and hands-on animal encounters with rays, sharks, and sea lions.

Dinah Veeris's traditional herb and aloe garden in the countryside, an ethnobotanical Kunuku garden preserving Curaçao's folk medicine, plants, and Afro-Caribbean heritage.

Dolphin encounters and in-water swims at the Sea Aquarium park near Willemstad, from shallow-water meets to guided snorkel and scuba sessions with bottlenose dolphins.

The 1635 Dutch fort at the mouth of St Anna Bay, now the seat of Curaçao's government. It holds a small church museum and still has a British cannonball lodged in one wall.

Limestone caves in the north near the airport, with stalactites, underground pools, a colony of bats, and Amerindian rock paintings left by the island's original inhabitants.

Historic salt pans near Sint Willibrordus where wild flamingos gather to feed in the pink-tinged shallows. Best photographed at dawn or dusk from the roadside.

An uninhabited island southeast of Curaçao with brilliant white sand, an old lighthouse, a shipwreck, and turtles in clear water. A full-day boat trip from Spanish Water or Caracas Bay.

An anthropological museum in Otrobanda confronting the transatlantic slave trade and African heritage, set in a restored historic quarter on the site of a former slave-trading yard.

Founded in 1651, this is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the Americas. Its 1732 building is famous for the white sand spread across the sanctuary floor.

A floating pontoon footbridge that swings open across St Anna Bay to link the Punda and Otrobanda sides of Willemstad. Free to cross, and one of the most photographed sights on the island.