Saint-Pierre

Saint-Pierre was the first permanent French settlement on Martinique, founded by Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc around a small fort beside the Roxelane river for the French crown and the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique. Its sheltered anchorage made it the colony's port, exporting sugar and coffee from the surrounding plantations. In 1692 the governor's seat moved to Fort-Royal, the future Fort-de-France, but Saint-Pierre remained the island's economic and cultural capital. The Great Hurricane of 1780 drove a storm surge of about 8 metres into the town, and it was rebuilt.

In the 19th century it reached its peak and was called the "Paris of the Caribbean", with theatres, cafés, newspapers, a botanical garden and a busy port. From April 1902 Mont Pelée gave warnings — a smell of sulphur, explosions, ashfall — but no evacuation was ordered, partly because of a second round of elections due on 11 May. On 8 May, Ascension Day, at 7.52 in the morning, a burning cloud swept down the volcano and destroyed the town in minutes, killing about 28,000 people, and the ships in the harbour sank. The prisoner Louis-Auguste Cyparis, shielded by the thick walls of his cell, and the shoemaker Léon Compère-Léandre are among the few known survivors.

Fort-de-France took over the role of main city, and Saint-Pierre was only partly reoccupied, never regaining its population or importance. In 1990 the whole town was labelled a Ville d'Art et d'Histoire, and in 2023 the volcanoes and forests of Mont Pelée became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Saint-Pierre's identity is bound up with memory. The ruins of the theatre, the prison, the Fort church and the old warehouses stand among the rebuilt houses, and the town as a whole carries the national Ville d'Art et d'Histoire label. Its museums tell the story: the Frank-A.-Perret volcano museum, founded in 1932 and holding the Musée de France label, the town's history museum, and the earth-science centre at Périnelle.

Before 1902 it was the island's cultural capital, with a theatre seating 800 that staged plays for visitors as distinguished as Rochambeau and Ferdinand de Lesseps, newspapers and one of the first asylums for the mentally ill. Some of the story has travelled far: the survivor Cyparis later toured with the Barnum & Bailey circus, and the naval officer Georges Hébert, who witnessed the disaster, went on to develop a method of physical training from the experience.

Residents are called Pierrotains and Pierrotines. Daily culture is Creole and Catholic, and the co-cathedral, rebuilt after 1902 through the efforts of the industrialist Victor Depaz, remains the town's main church. Carnival is celebrated here as in towns across the island.

About 4,000 people lived in the commune at the 2023 census, a slight fall since 2017 — a fraction of the tens of thousands who lived here before 1902. The town is still a sub-prefecture and keeps services for the north-west coast: a hospital, the Victor Anicet secondary school, tax and social security offices and an employment agency.

The economy rests mainly on tourism, above all diving on the wrecks in the harbour, which were rediscovered by divers from 1974 and have become popular dive sites. The Depaz distillery makes rum on the volcano's slopes, and quarrying provides some fifty direct jobs.

The town is small — practically two one-way streets parallel to the shore — divided by the Roxelane into the Fort quarter to the north and the Mouillage to the south. Life centres on the restored harbourfront, the market and the church, with Mont Pelée, still active and closely monitored, always in view.

Saint-Pierre eats the island's Creole food. Accras de morue, salt-cod fritters, are the standard snack; colombo, a curry of chicken, pork or goat made with a spice blend brought by Indian labourers, is a staple; and fish is served as court-bouillon, in a spiced tomato and lime sauce, or as blaff, poached in a broth flavoured with lime and herbs. The waterfront market sells the fruit, vegetables and spices that go into them.

Rum is the town's other product. The Depaz distillery on the slopes of Mont Pelée produces rhum agricole — distilled from fresh sugar-cane juice rather than molasses — and since 2006 it has also distilled for the Dillon brand, whose cellars are in Fort-de-France. The ti-punch, white rum with cane syrup and a piece of lime, is the usual aperitif.

The restaurants along the main streets and the harbourfront serve Creole dishes and fish, and snack stands sell accras and boudin.