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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: The Magnificent Seven (Port of Spain), Trinidad (c. 1902-1910)
Description: Historian Gérard Besson uncovers the colonial foundations of Caribbean cosmopolitanism, through the Magnificent Seven (Port of Spain), in Trinidad.
Seven magnificent buildings, each unique in design and craftsmanship, overlook Trinidad’s annual Caribbean Carnival along the Queen’s Park Savannah. Amongst them, a Moorish-inspired Corsican manor, a Scottish castle, a New England country house, an Archbishop’s Romanesque palace, and a French colonial complex stand side-by-side. Designed by European architects in the final days of the Trinidad Raj, and built with local materials and labour, the Magnificent Seven were yet the shared spoils of the island’s new coc...