Kourou

Before the French arrived late in the 17th century, the Kalina, also called Galibi, lived along this coast, and their rock carvings survive at Les Roches Gravées near the town. In 1710 Jesuit missionaries settled converts to farm at Guatémala, across the river, and in 1744 the scientist La Condamine passed by on his way back from measuring the meridian arc near the equator, giving his name to one of the mountains behind the town.

In 1763, having lost New France, the French government sent a great expedition to colonise Guiana. Ten to twelve thousand settlers, mostly French and lured by tales of an El Dorado, landed at Kourou, where engineers had laid out a town around the Church of Saint Catherine. Around 6,000 died within the year of fevers and other illnesses; survivors fled to the windswept offshore islands to recover, which is why they became the Îles du Salut, the Salvation Islands. The disaster gave the colony the nickname "Green Hell".

From the 19th century Kourou had a prison devoted mostly to agriculture, part of the penal system centred on the islands, which became prisons in 1852; the Kourou prison closed in 1946. In 1964 France chose Guiana for its spaceport, and the Guiana Space Centre was founded behind the village in 1965. The European Space Agency has used it since 1975, and the village of a few hundred people became a modern town, with new districts for staff, the Foreign Legion's 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment from 1973 and a town hall completed around 1979.

Kourou is a meeting of very different communities. The Kalina, Creoles and Maroons — Boni and Saramaka — form one group, metropolitan French families linked to the space centre another, and Brazilians, Surinamese, Hmong, Haitians and Guyanese a third, each roughly equal in size. The Saramaka have their own district by the river, and many residents head upriver at weekends to camp in hammocks in the forest.

The space centre shapes the town's identity, and its launches can be watched from official viewpoints by invitation or from a nearby beach. The Foreign Legion has been part of town life since 1973, though not always smoothly, with clashes between legionnaires and residents in 1985 and 2006.

Before the space centre, the bourg was the heart of the community, where people gathered for church, market and festivals such as Carnival, and Carnival is still celebrated, with street parades every Sunday of the season. In summer free films are shown on the beach. The memory of the penal colony is everywhere offshore, in the ruins of the Îles du Salut, which feature in Henri Charrière's memoir Papillon.

Kourou had 24,824 inhabitants in 2023, making it the fifth most populous commune in French Guiana. About half of those counted in 2015 had been born in French Guiana, with many of the rest from metropolitan France, Suriname, Haiti and Brazil. The change has been rapid: before the space centre, the bourg had about 200 people, and children from the surrounding savannah walked two hours each way to school there.

The economy is dominated by the space centre, where Ariane 6, first flown in July 2024, and Vega C are launched; Soyuz rockets also flew from here from 2011 until Roscosmos suspended operations in February 2022. The Legion's base and the hospital, open since 1965, are other fixtures of the town, and a solar power plant was built on the Aubanèle savannah in 2010.

Markets are held in the morning, and at weekends many people go up the river to camp. On launch days parts of the town and the islands are closed. Crime is a recurring concern, and the town held a march against insecurity in 2006.

Kourou eats the Creole food of French Guiana, with Brazilian, Chinese and Maroon influences brought by its communities. Bouillon d'awara, the stew of awara palm pulp, smoked meat and seafood, is the dish of Easter; colombo, fricassée and blaff — fish poached with lime, chilli and herbs — are everyday fare, alongside couac and cassave, both made from cassava.

Fish matters here more than most things. The Kourou River holds a great many species used in the local diet, and the fish hall in the old town sells fresh fish, with a vegetable market alongside and another market on Place de la République. Restaurants in town serve Creole, Brazilian and Chinese food, and pizza and ice cream are as easy to find as local dishes.

Ti-punch — white rhum agricole, cane syrup and lime — is the aperitif, and punches and juices such as maracuja and comou are the other drinks.