The fort's polygonal layout and projecting bastions carry the unmistakable signature of Sebastien Le Prestre, Marquis of Vauban, the French military engineer whose defensive designs reshaped European warfare. An artillery battery was established on this headland overlooking St. George's harbor in the late 17th century, when the French colony - established in 1650 by the French West India Company - was growing after the crown assumed direct control in 1674. That growth brought conflict with the indigenous Kalinago people, and the battery expanded into a proper fortification between 1706 and 1710. The Vauban-style geometry was designed to eliminate dead angles where attackers could shelter, each bastion covering its neighbor in overlapping fields of fire. It was military science transplanted to a Caribbean hilltop, and it worked well enough to survive three centuries of use.

When Britain acquired Grenada under the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War, the fort was renamed for King George III. It surrendered to a French assault during the Anglo-French War of 1778-1783 - the same campaign that saw the dramatic storming of Hospital Hill nearby - but returned to British hands after the 1783 peace. Of the eight defensive forts the colonial powers built around St. George's, only three survive: Fort George, Fort Mathew, and Fort Frederick. The system has been placed on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List, a recognition that these weathered stone walls represent something larger than any single empire's ambitions. They are artifacts of the centuries when European powers treated Caribbean islands as prizes to be won, lost, and won again, while the people who actually lived on them endured each transition.

Maurice Bishop came to power in 1979 by overthrowing Sir Eric Gairy in a bloodless coup, establishing the People's Revolutionary Government and renaming the fort after his father, Rupert Bishop. For four years, the fort served as headquarters of the People's Revolutionary Army. Bishop was popular - young, articulate, genuinely committed to social programs that reached Grenada's poorest communities. But tensions within the revolutionary movement escalated, and on 19 October 1983, hardliners led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard seized power. Bishop and several of his cabinet members were brought to the fort's courtyard and shot. The execution of a leader beloved by many Grenadians, carried out by members of his own party in the fort that bore his family's name, was a betrayal of shattering intimacy. Six days later, the United States invaded Grenada, citing the political chaos and the presence of Cuban military advisors. Democracy was restored. The fort's name reverted to Fort George.

For decades after 1983, Fort George served a prosaic purpose: it housed the headquarters of the Royal Grenada Police Force. The courtyard where Bishop died became a place officers walked through on their way to work. In 2023, Economic Development Minister Lennox Andrews announced plans to transform the fort into a major tourist destination, with a renovated historic tunnel, a museum, and a restaurant. The police headquarters relocated to offices in the city by 2024. The Grenadian government has also announced plans to build a shrine honoring those killed in the October 1983 mass killings. The fort is becoming what contested historical sites often become: a place where a nation tries to hold its contradictions together. French engineering, British imperialism, revolutionary hope, political murder, and now tourism and remembrance - all layered onto the same stone walls above the same harbor, the Caribbean light falling on ramparts that have seen everything a small island can endure.