City overview
Curaçao is a Dutch Caribbean island 40 miles off the Venezuelan coast, where pastel-coloured colonial waterfronts, a UNESCO-listed capital and more than 35 named beaches sit inside a dry, cactus-studded landscape that stays warm and largely rainless all year. Willemstad is the centre of everything — the floating Queen Emma Bridge, the Handelskade merchant houses and the island's museums — while the western half of the island holds the cliff-backed coves, national parks and reef diving. Jewish life on Curaçao goes back to the 1650s and the community today numbers under 350. Orthodox life on the island runs through Shaarei Tsedek in the Mahaai district, an Ashkenazi congregation founded in 1959 and led since 2017 by Rabbi Refoel and Chani Silver as Chabad of Curaçao, which also supplies the island's only kosher food.
Historic Willemstad
Curacao · Free
The UNESCO-listed historic centre of Willemstad, covering Punda, Pietermaai, Otrobanda and Scharloo, best known for the row of pastel Dutch colonial merchant houses along the Handelskade waterfront.
Time needed
2–4 hours
Hours
Open daily 24 hours
Tips
The famous colours date only from 1817 onward. The waterfront photographs best from the Otrobanda side in the morning light.
Neighborhood
Willemstad
Activity providers
Kosher map of Curacao
Pick a place on the map or search an address or hotel to see what is kosher around it.