Saint John Anglican Cathedral in Belize City, Belize

The oldest Anglican church in Central America hosted the coronations of four indigenous kings. In 1812 the British Crown felt the need to establish more control over what had been a community of pirates in then British Honduras, now known as Belize. So they constructed the first church in the territory using slave labour, local mahogany, and red bricks carried as ballast from England.

Throughout its history the church would host the coronations of four indigenous Miskito kings from 1815 to 1845 and the funerals and burials of many of Belize’s most influential persons in the nearby Yarborough cemetery, the oldest in the country. The church sits across from the historic governor’s mansion, now an art museum, and itself contains a wooden dove sculpture by Belizean artist George Gab, as well as plaques commissioned by the families of some of the churches earliest parishioners. Get more unusual and extraordinary places each week with the Atlas Obscura Places newsletter.

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