A taste of Jacmel

Jacmel, Haiti’s Cultural Treasure

Jacmel is a port town on the south coast of Haiti. The city center has many colonial-style buildings, including the 19th-century Maison Cadet, with its conical red roof. The interior walls of the Salubria Gallery, in an old house, are hung with Haitian art. West of town, the Bassin-Bleu are blue pools fed by waterfalls, surrounded by lush vegetation. To the east, sandy Raymond Les Bains is a popular beach.

History

• 

• 

The town was founded by the Compagnie de Saint-Domingue in 1698 as the capital of the southeastern part of the French colony Saint-Domingue. The area now called Jacmel was Taíno territory, part of the Xaragua chiefdom ruled by cacique Bohechio. With the arrival of the French, and the later establishment of the town, the French renamed Yaquimel as Jacmel.

The city was developed to boost sugar production and trade, but soon it evolved into a coffee trading centre. In 1896 it suffered a major fire that destroyed most of the buildings in the city. The city was rebuilt, often using prefabricated cast-iron pillars and balconies shipped from France. Many ornate mansions of wealthy coffee merchants from this time have been preserved up to this day without much change and the whole central part of the city has changed little over the last 100 years