We call it Jamaica s heart and soul retreat . Orchids, bananas and palm trees grow in profusion.
Waterfalls drop into fern-edged pools.
And some of the island s most elegant villas and charming small hotels are tucked into hillsides overlooking secluded azure coves. Founded in 1723, Port Antonio was Jamaica s most important center for banana growth and export in the late 1800s. One of the island s first hotels was built here in 1905, and it soon became a vacation mecca for the rich and famous of the day. Today, Port Antonio s unrivalled beauty makes it popular for movies and fashion shoots, while its resorts and villas continue to provide inspiration for celebrities, writers, royalty, and captains of industry, commerce and politics. From the Romanesque ruins of the Folly, a mansion unwisely built of concrete and seawater, to Fort George, an 18th-century British stronghold whose cannons still point out to sea, the past is only a heartbeat away in Port Antonio.