Old Market Plaza

Historic market square, formerly a slave-trading site

The Old Market Plaza is the original market square of colonial Roseau, a cobbled triangle of land beside the Dominica Museum. The market function has long since moved to the larger New Market by the river, and the plaza is now a daily craft fair selling Kalinago basketry, hot sauce, vetiver soap, and the usual cruise-passenger souvenirs.

A small monument in the corner commemorates its earlier use as a slave market. The whole space, surrounded by a few of the older stone-and-timber buildings in town, gives the best sense of what colonial Roseau once looked like.

things to do sight
A story
The Old Market — also called Dawbiney Market Square — was the principal slave-trading site in Roseau from the late eighteenth century until emancipation in 1838. The plaza was the public meeting space for proclamations, executions, and the sale of enslaved Africans. Today it is a craft market and a quiet reminder of that history.