Saint Helena

Saint Helena is one of the most remote inhabited islands on Earth — a tiny British Overseas Territory adrift in the South Atlantic Ocean, 1,950 kilometers west of Angola and 4,000 kilometers east of Brazil. The island measures just 16 by 8 kilometers, yet within that modest frame lies an extraordinary concentration of history, endemic biodiversity, and sheer dramatic beauty. Volcanic cliffs rise 700 meters from the ocean, cradling a miniature world of cloud forests, arid valleys, flax-covered peaks, and one of the most improbable capital cities anywhere: Jamestown, squeezed into a narrow valley between towering walls of rock.

For most of its history, Saint Helena was accessible only by ship — a five-day voyage from Cape Town aboard the RMS St Helena, the last Royal Mail Ship in service. The opening of Saint Helena Airport in 2017 changed everything, connecting the island to the wider world with weekly flights from Johannesburg. But the island's population of approximately 4,500 "Saints" (as they call themselves) remains a close-knit community defined by their extraordinary isolation. Saint Helena is, above all, the island of Napoleon — the place where the most powerful man in Europe spent his final six years in exile, and where he died in 1821. But it is also much more than that.

Saint Helena was discovered by Portuguese navigator João da Nova on 21 May 1502 — the feast day of Saint Helena of Constantinople. Uninhabited and covered in dense forest, the island became a vital provisioning stop for ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch, English, and Portuguese all used the island, with the English East India Company formally taking control in 1659. The Company built Jamestown, established fortifications, and imported enslaved people and settlers to work the land.

The island's most dramatic chapter began on 15 October 1815, when Napoleon Bonaparte arrived aboard HMS Northumberland to begin his exile. The British chose Saint Helena precisely because of its remoteness — escape was virtually impossible. Napoleon spent six years at Longwood House on the island's damp, windswept plateau, dictating his memoirs and gradually declining in health until his death on 5 May 1821. His original tomb (in a beautiful valley he had chosen himself) remained on the island until 1840, when his remains were returned to Paris. Today, Longwood House and the tomb site are French territory — maintained by the French government as national monuments.

Longwood House — Napoleon's residence for the final six years of his life — remains remarkably intact and is the island's most visited site. The modest house has been preserved much as it was during Napoleon's occupancy, with the billiard room where he spent long hours, the bedroom where he died, and the study where he dictated his memoirs and waged his final battles — of words — against his British jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe. The relationship between Napoleon and Lowe was legendarily toxic, with the ex-Emperor refusing to acknowledge Lowe's authority and Lowe responding with ever-tighter restrictions.

Napoleon's original tomb site, in the peaceful Geranium Valley (now called Sane Valley), is a moving spot — a simple iron railing surrounds the empty grave beneath tall Norfolk pines and willows. The valley is so serene it's easy to understand why Napoleon chose it. "I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, amid the French people I have loved so much," he wrote — but it took 19 years for that wish to be fulfilled. Both Longwood House and the tomb valley are owned and maintained by the French government, a quirk that gives Saint Helena the distinction of hosting French sovereign territory 7,000 kilometers from France.

Jamestown is one of the world's most unusual capital cities — a single street of Georgian and Victorian buildings squeezed into a valley so narrow that when you stand in the middle of Main Street and look up, the valley walls seem close enough to touch. The town was founded by the East India Company in 1659 and retains much of its 18th-century character: the Castle (the governor's residence since the 1600s), St James' Church (one of the oldest Anglican churches south of the equator), and rows of colorful colonial buildings lining the waterfront.

The city's most iconic feature is Jacob's Ladder — a staircase of 699 steps climbing the sheer valley wall from Jamestown to the plateau above, built in 1829 to haul manure from the town by incline railway. Today it's a tourist attraction and local fitness challenge: the record for climbing it stands at under five minutes. From the top, the view down over Jamestown and out to the Atlantic is spectacular. The town also houses the excellent Saint Helena Museum, which covers the island's history from its volcanic origins through the East India Company period, the slave trade, Napoleon's exile, and the Boer War prisoner camps.

No account of Saint Helena is complete without Jonathan — the Seychelles giant tortoise who has lived on the grounds of Plantation House (the Governor's official residence) since arriving on the island in 1882. Born approximately in 1832, Jonathan is the world's oldest known living land animal, having celebrated his 190th birthday in 2022. He is virtually blind and has lost his sense of smell, but he remains active, grazing on the Plantation House lawn and occasionally posing for photographs with visitors.

Jonathan has outlived 32 British monarchs and 40 U.S. presidents. He arrived on Saint Helena during the reign of Queen Victoria and has been a resident through two World Wars, the invention of the automobile, airplane, television, internet, and artificial intelligence. He appears on the Saint Helena five-pence coin and is considered the island's most famous current resident — a living link to an era when the island's isolation was measured not in flight hours but in weeks at sea.

Saint Helena's isolation has produced extraordinary biodiversity — and extraordinary loss. The island was once covered in dense cloud forest filled with species found nowhere else on Earth. European settlers and their introduced goats, rats, and cats devastated this ecosystem: of approximately 50 endemic plant species, nearly half are now critically endangered or extinct in the wild. The Saint Helena olive, gumwood, and ebony — once the island's dominant trees — survive only in tiny remnant patches and conservation plantings.

Conservation efforts are now among the most intensive in the world relative to the island's size. The Millennium Forest project is replanting thousands of endemic gumwood trees. Diana's Peak National Park protects the last remnants of cloud forest — a misty, moss-draped world at 823 meters that feels like stepping back in time. The surrounding waters are equally remarkable: whale sharks, humpback whales, and dolphins frequent the island's waters, and the endemic Saint Helena wirebird (a small plover) has become a conservation success story, recovering from near-extinction to a population of several hundred.

Saint Helena has no significant wine production, though the British Overseas Territory's volcanic soil and subtropical South Atlantic climate could theoretically support vines. The island's fame rests on Napoleon's exile (1815–1821) — Longwood House, where Napoleon spent his final years, is now a French consulate. Saint Helena Coffee (Green Tipped Bourbon, among the world's rarest and most expensive) is the island's most famous beverage export. Local beer is brewed, and South African wines are the primary imports. The opening of the island's airport in 2017 ended the isolation of this extraordinarily remote community.

Saint Helena Airport (HLE) now receives weekly flights from Johannesburg via Airlink (approximately 6 hours). The airport's famously turbulent crosswinds initially delayed its opening, but operations are now routine — though flight cancellations due to wind shear still occur. There is no alternative route: the RMS St Helena was retired when the airport opened. Accommodation is limited: a handful of small hotels and guesthouses in and around Jamestown, plus self-catering cottages scattered across the island.

The island is small enough to explore in 3–5 days by rental car or guided tour. Key sites include Longwood House and Napoleon's tomb, Jacob's Ladder, Plantation House (to see Jonathan), Diana's Peak for cloud forest hiking, Sandy Bay beach, and the historic fortifications at High Knoll Fort. The Saints are famously friendly, and the island's pace of life is extraordinarily relaxed. There is no mobile phone service on most of the island (though WiFi is expanding), no fast food, no traffic lights, and no crime to speak of. Bring cash (Saint Helena pound, at par with GBP) and a sense of adventure.

There are places that change you not because of what you do there, but because of what you understand there. Saint Helena is one of those places. Standing in the quiet valley where Napoleon was buried — surrounded by willows and silence, 7,000 kilometers from Paris — you feel the full weight of what exile means. Not just geographic distance, but the absolute severing of a person from everything they were.

But Saint Helena is so much more than Napoleon's prison. It's Jonathan, munching grass on the same lawn he's grazed since before the invention of the telephone. It's climbing Jacob's Ladder and arriving breathless at the top to find the entire South Atlantic spread before you. It's the Saints themselves — warm, unhurried, utterly unbothered by the rest of the world's haste. The airport has changed the island's accessibility, but not yet its character. Go soon, while the Saints still outnumber the tourists.

— Radim Kaufmann, Kaufmann World Travel Factbook