Pointe-à-Pitre

French colonial officials long wanted a town where Guadeloupe's two main islands meet, but attempts around 1713–1730 failed because the ground was swampy and unhealthy. During the British occupation of 1759–1763 a settlement grew on a hill above the swamps, and after the islands returned to France the town was founded by royal edict in 1764 under the governor Gabriel de Clieu. The swamps where the centre now stands were drained over the following years, and the town grew quickly, helped by its corsairs and its large sheltered harbour on the Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin.

Its history is a list of disasters. A great fire destroyed the whole town in 1780 and an earthquake did so again in 1843; there were further fires in 1850, 1871 and 1931, earthquakes in 1851 and 1897, hurricanes in 1865 and 1928, and repeated cholera epidemics. After the 1928 hurricane the architect Ali Tur rebuilt much of the civic town between 1930 and 1935, including the courthouse, the hospital, the fish hall, schools and the fire station. The town was also the seat of a Catholic diocese until it was united with Basse-Terre's in 1951.

Despite all this Pointe-à-Pitre became Guadeloupe's largest town and economic capital. In 2008 the first stone of the Mémorial ACTe was laid on the site of the Darboussier sugar factory, and the memorial was inaugurated in 2015. Since 2007 the town has been Guadeloupe's only sub-prefecture.

Pointe-à-Pitre is the centre of Guadeloupe's carnival. The season runs from the first Sunday of January to Ash Wednesday, moving from commune to commune each Sunday, but the great Dimanche Gras parade is always held here, and most of the groupes à po — the skin-drum bands — come from the town and parade through it on Sunday evenings. Gwoka itself is honoured in the town's statue of the percussionist Marcel Lollia, known as Vélo.

Memory of slavery and resistance shapes the townscape. Statues honour La Mulâtresse Solitude, Louis Delgrès and Joseph Ignace, a painting recalls the riots of May 1967, and the Musée Schœlcher keeps the belongings of the abolitionist Victor Schœlcher. The Mémorial ACTe, built as a place of collective memory of slavery and the slave trade that is also open to the present-day world, has won several international museum and heritage awards.

The town has strong literary ties: the Nobel laureate Saint-John Perse is the subject of a museum in the old quarter, and the novelist Maryse Condé, who died in 2024, is linked to it and gives her name to the airport. Every four years the town becomes the finish line of the Route du Rhum, the single-handed yacht race from Saint-Malo.

About 15,000 people lived in the commune itself in 2023, according to INSEE, a fall of more than 5 per cent since 2017 as businesses and residents have moved to the suburbs. The town is the heart of an urban unit of 11 communes and about 253,000 people, shared above all with neighbouring Les Abymes, the most populous commune in Guadeloupe. In 2009, 70 per cent of the town's residents lived in subsidised public housing.

The town remains the commercial capital of the islands and the main port of call for cargo and passengers, though the main seaport and the large Jarry industrial zone, a centre of warehousing and distribution, lie across the bay in Baie-Mahault. Facing competition from its suburbs, the congested commune has been losing businesses as well as inhabitants.

Daily life follows Guadeloupe's wider rhythm: French in its administration and Caribbean in its pace, organised around family, the market and the Sunday meal. As across the islands, the cost of living is well above the mainland, unemployment is high, and the water supply is a recurring problem because of an ageing, leaking network.

The town's markets are its pantry. The listed covered central market on rue Frébault, also known as the spice market, sells the spices of Creole cooking — above all the colombo blend, brought by Indian indentured labourers, which flavours the curry of chicken, goat or fish that is a staple across the islands — along with local produce.

Everyday food is Creole and generously spiced. Accras de morue (salt-cod fritters) and boudin créole (spiced blood sausage) are the classic starters, court-bouillon de poisson is fish in a tomato and lime broth, and bokit, a fried-bread sandwich, is the snack sold from market stalls. Lolos, simple roadside eateries, grill fish and chicken and serve them with rice and red beans.

Ti-punch — rhum agricole, cane syrup and lime — is the ritual aperitif, made with Guadeloupe's well-regarded agricultural rums, and shrubb, an orange-peel rum liqueur, appears at Christmas. In the evenings the restaurants and bars of the marina are where much of the town eats out.