Sainte-Anne

At the end of the 17th century a chapel dedicated to Saint Anne was built for the people living around a dozen sugar estates in the far south of the island, served by Capuchin friars and dependent on the parish of Le Marin. Sugar cane covered almost all the farmland. The English burned the chapel in 1693; rebuilt, it became a parish church around 1730 under the name Sainte-Anne des Salines.

A hurricane destroyed the church again in 1817. It was rebuilt in 1824 — the date is carved on its facade — enlarged and embellished in 1866, and restored from 2003 before being reopened in September 2006. From 1869 the abbé Hurard had a Calvary built on the hill behind it, and since 1877 it has received the pilgrimage of Notre-Dame de La Salette every 19 September. The ruins of the Crève-Cœur and Les Anglais des Grottes estates and the mill of Val d'Or survive from the plantation era and are listed historic monuments.

In the late 20th century Sainte-Anne turned to tourism built on its beaches. From 1989 to 2014 its mayor was Garcin Malsa, a nationalist and environmentalist who founded the MODEMAS party in 1992, and the commune is described as a pilot of sustainable tourism. The Étang des Salines became a Ramsar wetland in 2008.

Village life still turns around the church and its square. The church of Notre-Dame is one of the oldest in Martinique, and the Calvary behind it is the busiest place of worship in the commune after the church itself; the La Salette pilgrimage each September brings several thousand people up the hill.

Football is the other passion. La Renaissance de Sainte-Anne won the Martinique championship three years running, in 1977, 1978 and 1979, and for the 2023–24 season the commune's two clubs, Santana Club and Renaissance FC, merged into a new one, Inter de Sainte-Anne.

Garcin Malsa, mayor for 25 years, was one of the pioneers of sustainable development in Martinique. Like the rest of the island, Sainte-Anne is Creole in speech and music and French in its institutions, and Carnival, the days before Lent, is celebrated here as in towns across Martinique, each with its own Carnival Queen. Visitors are expected to greet shopkeepers, dress modestly away from the sand and respect the church and Calvary as working places of worship.

About 4,300 people lived in the commune at the 2023 census, a figure almost unchanged since 2017 at a time when Martinique as a whole was losing population. Sainte-Anne counts as part of the urban unit centred on Le Robert.

Tourism dominates the economy. The commune has some 22 km of white-sand shoreline, and its beaches — the Salines above all, which a road count suggests receives nearly two million visits a year — are very popular with local people as well as visitors. Holiday rentals, restaurants, boat trips, kitesurfing and a holiday club provide much of the work.

The bourg is small, with shops around the church square and houses along the water, and life follows the rhythm of the beach and the weather. Beyond it the landscape turns dry: scrub, salt pond and the near-desert of the savanna at the southern tip, where the Trace des Caps path follows the coast.

Sainte-Anne eats the island's Creole food, a cuisine that mixes African, French, Carib Amerindian and Indian traditions. Accras de morue, salt-cod fritters, are the standard snack and starter; colombo, a curry of chicken, pork or goat made with a spice blend brought by Indian labourers, is a staple; and fish appears as court-bouillon, in a spiced tomato and lime sauce, or as blaff, poached in a broth flavoured with lime and herbs. Féroce d'avocat, mashed avocado with salt cod and chilli, is a classic starter.

The village has places to eat along the water, and there are snack bars near the beaches selling accras, boudin and fresh fruit juices.

The drink of the island is the ti-punch, made with white rhum agricole — rum distilled from fresh cane juice rather than molasses — cane syrup and lime. The sugar estates that once covered the commune are now ruins, but cane is still grown and distilled elsewhere on the island.