We start our walk at the Tourist Information Center, built as the guard post for Fort Zeelandia. The first colonist to arrive in Suriname, settled here, on this protruding piece of land in a bend of the Suriname River. A small French trading post, located here in the early 1600s, was conquered by the British under Lord Willoughby in 1650. The British began to build Fort Willoughby soon afterward, but it was still incomplete when it was captured by Abraham Crijnssen's fleet from the Dutch Zeeland in 1667. It has been called Fort Zeelandia ever since.

West of Fort Zeelandia is Onafhankelijkheidsplein (Independence Square), in the early days of open space used as a parade ground for the soldiers from the Fort. Onafhankelijkheidsplein remains today, as it has always been, the place where the population of Suriname gathers for important events.

The buildings on the southern part of the Square all date from after 1821, when this whole block burned down in the great fire of that year. The three buildings on the west are all older. In front of the central building is the statue of Jopie Pengel, the great popular leader of NPS (National Party Suriname), who died in 1970.

The building on the right is a typical Surinamese planter's house. This is the oldiest structure of the three, built as a residence in about 1750. It remains practically unchanged - the covered gallery on the front is typical of that era. Susanna Duplessis, a woman infamous in Suriname for ther cruel treatment of slaves, inhabited this house from 1785 to 1796. In 1796 the government purchased the building and eventually it became the Ministry of Home Affairs, a function it fulfilled until 1995. It was restored in 2001.