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Nevis' small capital, captivating CHARLESTOWN , boasts an impeccable assemblage of gingerbread-trimmed skirt-and-blouse houses , in keeping with residents' resolutely old-fashioned attitudes. These traditional attitudes can also be seen in the 1825 courthouse on a day that someone's being tried for swearing in public; you'll see the cusser in question sitting in a draconian crib-like prisoner's box. The upstairs library , with its heavy-set ceiling braced by mahogany gunwales, is equally devoid of modernity. Indeed, it seems the only thing that's changed about Charlestown in its near four-hundred-year history is that the 1778 Bath House - once the Caribbean's most happening spa - closed its shutters for good in the 1950s. The hot springs , however, at the south end of town, remain as invigorating as ever, and Nevisians and visitors alike are still fond of immersion. To partake of them yourself, you'll have to bring a towel and don your suit in advance, as there are no facilities. The best place to garner some island background is at the quaint Museum of Nevis History on Main Street (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm, Sat 9am-noon; US$2). Its informative collection of odds and sods occupies the main floor of a Georgian-style building on the grounds where Alexander Hamilton was born in 1757. While the Hamilton house was devastated by a mid-1800 earthquake, sovereign state-making is still being discussed above the museum in chambers used by Nevis' pro-independence House of Assembly. Near the hot springs at the opposite end of town, the Horatio Nelson Museum , on Building Hill Road (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm, Sat 9am-noon; US$2), focuses on Lord Nelson, who came ashore in 1785 and wound up marrying the governor's niece, Fanny Nisbet. While the collection consists mainly of kitsch and some pilaster copies of Nelson's Column, it gives a captivating overview of Nelson's Caribbean adventures. Along Government Road lies a remnant of another chapter in Nevisian history, a Jewish cemetery whose oldest stone dates from 1684. It's thought that a nearby grey-stone building served as a synagogue .
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