You have to cross Otrobanda, the Willemstad district long overshadowed by Punda, to reach the Kura Hulanda Village and its museum at 9 Klipstraat. The site occupies eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, restored around inner courtyards, on the very spot where slave ships once docked to sell their human cargo at the neighboring slave market.
The exhibition traces the history of the transatlantic slave trade from capture in Africa to forced settlement in the Americas, including a walk-through reconstruction of a slave ship's hold, chains and shackles included. The museum also holds a major collection of African art, Mesopotamian relics and pre-Columbian objects, the result of decades of collecting by Dutch entrepreneur Jacob Gelt Dekker, who opened the museum in April 1999 after buying and restoring these then-derelict buildings.
It is today one of the most important museums in the Caribbean devoted to the history of slavery in Curaçao, and the visit naturally extends into a stroll through the alleys and courtyards of the village, down to the surroundings of the Queen Emma Bridge. Allow a good hour for the exhibition, more if you take the time to pause in each restored courtyard. Few leave unmoved, but everyone leaves with a clearer sense of what these stones have witnessed.
