Parliament Square

Three matching pink-and-white Georgian buildings face each other across a small square just off Bay Street: the Bahamian Parliament Building (House of Assembly), the Senate, and the old Colonial Secretary's office. The colour is a particularly Bahamian shade of pink that you see all over the old downtown. A seated bronze of Queen Victoria sits at the centre.

The buildings are still in use as the working parliament of the Bahamas — you can sometimes hear debates through open windows. They make the photogenic centre of the cruise-passenger walking tour, and they are the most coherent Loyalist-era ensemble surviving in the Caribbean. The whole square is best photographed early morning before the streets fill.

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The pink Georgian buildings are nearly identical to the South Carolina state house in Charleston — a clear borrowing from Loyalists who fled the American colonies after independence and rebuilt their architectural world in Nassau. A statue of a youthful Queen Victoria, seated and holding the orb, has watched over the square since 1905.

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