Jodensavanne Archaeological Site

Jodensavanne is Suriname's second UNESCO World Heritage site, and most travel writing has not caught up with that. It was inscribed on 19 September 2023 as the Jodensavanne Archaeological Site: Jodensavanne Settlement and Cassipora Creek Cemetery — the country's first inscription since the historic inner city of Paramaribo.

The site is two linked places on the forested banks of the Suriname River. The settlement, founded in the 1680s, includes the ruins of what is believed to be the earliest architecturally significant synagogue in the Americas; the Cassipora Creek cemetery is older still. UNESCO's citation frames the whole as an illustration of early Jewish settlement in the New World.

The Jodensavanne Foundation maintains and presents the site and publishes a cemetery database and research on tombstone iconography. What it does not publish is visiting hours or an admission fee, and we are not going to guess at them.

In practice most visitors come on a day tour from Paramaribo — Orange Travel sells it as a river cruise — and Overbridge is a common lunch stop on the same day.