Jacmel

The bay was Taíno territory in the Xaragua chiefdom, and the town's name comes from its Taíno name, Yaquimel. The Spanish founded a settlement here in 1504, but it was abandoned when the colonists were moved to the east of the island. In 1698 the Compagnie de Saint-Domingue refounded it as the capital of the south-east of French Saint-Domingue, to boost sugar production and trade, and it soon became a coffee-trading centre.

Coffee made Jacmel rich in the 19th century. The town was rebuilt with prefabricated cast-iron pillars and balconies shipped from France, and many of the merchants' mansions from that era survive almost unchanged; the whole centre has changed little in a hundred years, and its architecture is said to have influenced houses in New Orleans. In 1925 it was dubbed the City of Light, the first town in the Caribbean to have electricity. The town is on UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage Sites.

On 12 January 2010 the magnitude 7.0 earthquake caused heavy damage and casualties in Jacmel; the later tremor stopped the cathedral clock. A local radio station estimated at least 5,000 dead, but the mayor later put the figure at 300–500 deaths and 4,000 injured. The civil court building was destroyed, and restoration projects followed, including work on a 200-year-old coffee-sorting house at the port.

Jacmel is known as Haiti's arts town. Nearly 200 artisans have worked in papier-mâché here, making the masks and figures that fill its carnival, and the old merchant houses hold workshops and shops selling crafts, masks and carved wooden animals. The town has long drawn painters and craftspeople, and the country's leading film school, the Ciné Institute, grew out of the Jacmel Film Festival in 2008.

The carnival is the town's great event: a month-long celebration ending the week before the national carnival, famous for costumes and masks that mix folklore legends, figures from Haiti's past, sports stars and political caricature. One of its characters, the robalagallina, a caricature of a planter's wife, was adopted by the carnival of the Dominican Republic, and the carnival has been promoted for UNESCO recognition.

The Jacmel Film Festival, first held in 2004, brought filmmakers from more than 30 countries and was attended by about 50,000 people a year, and an international music festival was launched in 2007. Religious life mixes Catholicism, Protestant churches and Vodou, as across Haiti.

The commune had 221,965 inhabitants at the 2024 census, making it the capital and main town of the Sud-Est department. Before the crisis its growth was driven in large part by income from tourism, which drew visitors from within Haiti, the diaspora and abroad for its carnival, its beaches and Bassin Bleu.

The economy rests on the port, trade, crafts and small businesses, and there have been efforts to revive the once flourishing cigar and coffee industries. The town has two hospitals, Hôpital Saint-Michel and the Complexe Médico Chirurgical Rose Marie Paul, and neighbouring Cayes-Jacmel has had a farmers' market twice a week. Summer has traditionally brought holidaymakers from within Haiti and from the diaspora to the beaches of Kabik, Timouillage and Raymond-les-Bains.

Where life continues with some normality, it centres on the market, the church, workshops and small shops, as in Haiti's other provincial towns.

Jacmel eats the Creole food of all Haiti, built on rice, beans, plantain and root vegetables, with seafood from the bay. Diri ak pwa, rice and beans, is the everyday staple, and diri djon djon, rice cooked black with tiny local mushrooms, is made for special occasions. Griot — pork marinated in citrus and epis seasoning, then boiled and fried — is served with pikliz, a fiery pickled-cabbage relish, and bannann peze, flattened fried plantain.

By the sea, fish and lambi, conch, are common. Street food includes fritay, an assortment of fried snacks, and akasan, a thick spiced corn drink. On 1 January every household makes soup joumou, the squash soup eaten to mark independence.

The town grew rich on coffee, which is still grown in Haiti's mountains, and efforts have been made to revive local coffee production. Barbancourt rum, double-distilled from sugarcane in the manner of cognac, is Haiti's most admired drink.