Sir Selwyn-Clarke Market, the Clocktower and Botanical Gardens

Compact enough to cross on foot in fifteen minutes, historic Victoria packs its liveliest Creole landmarks into a triangle of palm-shaded streets between the harbour and the lower slopes of Mont Fleuri. Start early in the morning while the fish and spice stalls are in full swing and the equatorial sun is still gentle.

Victoria Clocktower (Lorloz) and the National Museum

Every walk in the capital begins at the Victoria Clocktower (known in Seselwa Creole as Lorloz), standing at the junction of Independence Avenue and Francis Rachel Street. Erected in 1903 in memory of Queen Victoria when the Seychelles became a Crown Colony separate from Mauritius, the cast-iron tower is a miniature replica of the Little Ben clock at Vauxhall Bridge in London and remained painted silver rather than black and gold. Directly beside the roundabout stands the restored colonial Supreme Court building with its wide white verandas, now home to the National Museum of History, displaying 16th-century maritime maps, pirate artefacts from Olivier Levasseur (La Buse), traditional moutya drums and Creole domestic life.

Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market and the Hindu Temple

Walk two blocks north-west along pedestrianised Albert Street and Market Street to the wrought-iron gates of Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market, originally built in 1840 and named after a popular mid-20th-century British governor. Cattle egrets perch above the wet-fish counters where fishermen fillet silver jobfish, bourgeois snapper and parrotfish, while surrounding wooden tables overflow with soursop, golden mangoes, bundles of cinnamon bark, whole nutmegs, cured vanilla beans and jars of red chilli mazavarou. Upstairs, breezy balconies hold pareo boutiques and local tailors.

One street over on Quincy Street stands the Arul Mihu Navasakthi Vinayagar Temple (1992), the only Hindu temple in the Seychelles, crowned by a multi-tiered pastel gopuram tower carved with deities that contrasts strikingly with the dark granite wall of the Trois Frères mountains behind it.

Seychelles National Botanical Gardens at Mont Fleuri

Finish your morning fifteen minutes' walk south of the clocktower at the five-hectare Seychelles National Botanical Gardens (founded in 1901). Shaded paths climb past an avenue of endemic coco de mer palms (bearing the largest, heaviest double-lobed seeds in the plant kingdom), fragrant spice trees, an orchid house and a grassy paddock where dozens of centenarian Aldabra giant tortoises happily munch hibiscus leaves from visitors' hands before you head up the hill for lunch or a mountain hike or back to your hotel.