Museum of Belize

According to Wikipedia, the building was constructed in the mid-1850s, with work dated from 1854 or 1855 and completed in 1857, while Belize was still a British colony known as British Honduras, replacing an earlier wooden prison nearby. It served as the Belize City prison until 1993, when prisoners were moved to Hattieville Prison. The building was then restored and renovated, and it was established as a national museum in 2002.

Wikipedia describes exhibits on about 3,000 years of Maya history, including Maya artifacts, along with colonial life, natural history, visual arts and the cultures of Belize's many ethnic groups. A distinctive part of the museum is its treatment of slavery in Belize, with a timeline, accounts of slave revolts and the maroon communities of escaped enslaved people. The prison's own history is also an exhibit, which means the building itself works as an artifact of the colonial justice system.

The museum stands in the Fort George area, which Wikipedia calls the most colonial part of Belize City. This district also holds Memorial Park, the Baron Bliss grave and lighthouse, and the former Government House, now called the House of Culture, which was the Governor-General's official residence until 1984. Other museums in the city include the Bliss Institute and the Maritime Museum. The Supreme Court still sits in Belize City.

Belize City was founded as Belize Town in 1638 by English wood cutters on the site of a small Maya settlement, Holzuz, according to Wikipedia, and it grew as a shipping point for logwood and mahogany. The city was incorporated as the capital in 1783. The 1798 Battle of St. George's Caye, which the British won, was coordinated from Belize Town, and the settlement's later history was shaped by the 1931 hurricane and by Hurricane Hattie in October 1961, which Wikipedia says almost entirely destroyed the city. The city's African-descended population was largely brought in to work the forestry industry. It was the capital of British Honduras until the government moved to Belmopan in 1970.

Other landmarks in the old colonial core include St. John's Cathedral, begun in 1812 and completed in 1820, and the Swing Bridge over Haulover Creek, so the museum fits naturally into a walk through the historic centre.

A private guide can help connect the museum's displays on the Maya, the forestry economy and colonial rule with the sites seen elsewhere in the city and on excursions inland, with a private vehicle and driver handling transfers.