Saint-Pierre

Saint-Pierre was founded in 1735, when the island was run by the French East India Company, on the dry southern coast. The plain behind it was planted first with coffee and then, decisively, with sugar cane, and the town grew as the port and administrative centre of the south, shipping sugar out through an exposed roadstead until a proper harbour was built between 1854 and 1882.

Sugar shaped the town's society as well as its economy. Enslaved workers from Madagascar and East Africa cleared and cut the cane until abolition in 1848, after which indentured labourers arrived from South India, together with Gujarati Muslim traders and Chinese shopkeepers who settled in the streets near the market; their temples, mosque and shops remain part of the centre. The town hall has occupied a former Company warehouse, completed in 1773, since 1825, and the old fishing quarter of Terre-Sainte kept its own life east of the centre.

Departmentalisation in 1946 and the closure of most small sugar mills in the 20th century turned Saint-Pierre from a plantation port into a service town. Schools, hospitals, university faculties, administration and retail parks spread inland across the cane plain; the harbour now holds some 400 berths for fishing and pleasure boats, and the seafront given over to a promenade and public beach. It is the island's third-largest commune and is often regarded as its second city.

Saint-Pierre has a reputation on the island for going out. The seafront bars and restaurants, the concerts held on the front and the weekend crowds make it the centre of southern nightlife, and maloya — the drum-and-chant music created by enslaved workers and now a symbol of Réunionnais identity — is played at kabars here as much as anywhere on the island, alongside the lighter séga and visiting acts from the region.

Religious life is mixed and public. Catholic parishes and their processions share the calendar with Tamil temples whose Dipavali celebrations are important in the south, with a mosque and a Chinese temple community near the centre, and many families keep more than one tradition. The 20 December abolition holiday, Fèt Kaf, is marked with music and ceremonies along the front.

Terre-Sainte, the fishing quarter, has its own identity, and the sea is central to the town's sense of itself despite the restrictions on swimming along much of the island's coast. Sport and the outdoors matter: the Grand Raid ultra-trail sets off from the south each October, and cycling and trail running fill the slopes above the town. Sundays belong to family picnics on the grass behind the beach.

About 85,000 people live in Saint-Pierre, making it the third largest commune on the island and the anchor of an urban area that runs up the slope into Le Tampon and along the coast. The population is young, and the town's university faculties and large secondary schools bring students down from the surrounding communes.

The economy is built on administration, health, education, retail and tourism, with sugar cane still grown on the plain around Pierrefonds and fishing based in the harbour. Employment is the town's chief social problem, as it is across the island, with unemployment far above the mainland French rate and highest among the young; many leave for mainland France to study or find work, and some return.

Daily life follows the heat. Shops and offices open early, the middle of the day is slow, and the seafront fills from late afternoon with runners, families and football on the sand until well after dark. Housing spreads inland up the slope, where the air is cooler, and the daily commute down to the coast and along the highway is heavy at both ends of the day. The cyclone season from November to April brings alerts that close schools and public services, and the rhythm of the year is set by it as much as by the school calendar.

Saint-Pierre eats the island's Creole cooking with an emphasis on fish. A cari of tuna, marlin, swordfish or octopus — cari zourite — comes with rice, grains, rougail of tomato and chilli and a spoonful of fiery piment, and rougail saucisses, smoked sausages in tomato, is the everyday household dish. Boucané, smoked pork, turns up with beans, and civet de cerf, a venison stew, appears in cooler months.

The town's markets sell vanilla, combava, turmeric, chillies, tropical fruit, honey, palm heart and rhum arrangé — rum steeped for months with fruit, spices or vanilla — alongside baskets and embroidery. Snack counters and vans sell samoussas, bonbons piment (chilli and split-pea fritters) and bouchons, the steamed pork dumplings that came with Chinese migration, and bakeries sell French bread and pastries beside them.

Sugar is still the region's crop, and rum its most famous product: distilleries in the south, one of them founded in the 19th century, make white rum, aged rum and the arrangés sold in every market. Dodo lager, sirop de fraise and strong short coffee complete the table, and the Sunday picnic on the beach or in the hills, with a cari cooked over wood, is the meal that matters most.