Belize City was probably settled by Peter Wallace when he landed at the mouth of the Haulover Creek in 1638. In 1783 it was incorporated as a town and called Belize Town and then upgraded to city status in 1981.
Belize City was the capital of Belize from 1783 until 1970 when the government was moved to the new city of Belmopan.
St. John's Church was built between 1812 and 1820 with bricks used as ballast aboard ships. It is situated on Regent St. in Belize City. It was the first church to be built in British Honduras.
The exterior of the church is of brick; the interior is fitted out in mahogany and sapodilla. It was built by the British using slave labour.
The cathedral is a historical landmark of Belize from the colonial influence of the country's past. Attached to the church is the oldest cemetery in the country, Yarborough Cemetery.
On January 18, 1816 George Frederic Augustus I was crowned king of the Miskito Kingdom in St. John's Church. When George Frederic Augustus I was murdered by his wife, his brother Robert Charles Frederic was crowned King. The coronation happened in St. John's Church on April 23, 1824. It was a strategy of the British to use the Church of England to crown their kings as a means to control the indians from the Miskito Kingdom in Honduras and Nicaragua.
Initially a parish church, St. John's Church was renamed St. John's Cathedral in 1891, a few years after the diocese of British Honduras had been erected.
On September 2, 2018 his Excellency Pedro Moore Ricardo came to Belize and was crowned in St. John's Cathedral by Anglican Bishop Philip Wright. The reason was to restore ties with the Miskito people that settled in British Honduras in the 1700s. [1]
Belize City derives it's name from the Belize River which in turn comes from the mayan word Balis meaning "muddy waters" or possibly the name is a corruption of Wallace from Peter Wallace.