Bob Marley Museum Must See!

For many, Jamaica means reggae, and reggae means Bob Marley. If this sounds like you, a visit to Kingston definitely means a visit to the reggae superstar’s former home and studio. The creaky wooden house on Hope Rd where Marley once lived and recorded is the city’s most-visited site. Today the house functions as a tourist attraction, museum and shrine, but much remains as it was during Marley’s day. The house is guarded by a sentry of faithful Rasta brethren and sisters and shielded by a vibrantly painted wall festooned with Rastafarian murals. Dominating the forecourt is a gaily colored statue of the musical legend. Some of the guides are overly solemn (focusing with eerie earnestness on the room where Marley survived assassination), but the hour-long tour provides fascinating insights into the life he led after moving uptown. His gold and platinum records ( Exodus, 1977; Uprising, 1980; and Legend, 1984) are there on the walls, alongside Rastafarian religious cloaks, Marley’s favorite denim stage shirt and the Order of Merit presented by the Jamaican government. One room upstairs is decorated with media clippings about the superstar. Another contains a replica of Marley’s original record shop, Wail’n Soul’m. Perhaps most powerfully, Marley’s simple bedroom has been left as it was, with his star-shaped guitar by the bedside. The former recording studio out back is now an exhibition hall and theater, where the tour closes with a fascinating film of his final days. A recently upgraded shopping court offers ‘official’ Marley products including Bob’s Honey, produced by a hive of bees that’s been buzzing on the site since the musician adopted them in the mid-1970s. No cameras or tape recorders are permitted inside

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/jamaica/kingston/sights/museum/bob-marley-museum#ixzz1uvDf0dc4