Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince is the capital of Haiti, a port city on the Gulf of Gonâve on the west coast of Hispaniola. It takes its name from Le Prince, a French ship that anchored in the bay early in the 18th century. The Centre d'Art, opened in the 1940s, made the city a center of Haitian painting, and artists such as Hector Hyppolite first showed their work there.

The French founded the town in 1749 on the bay, and in 1770 it replaced Cap-Français as the capital of the colony of Saint-Domingue. Haiti became independent at the start of the 19th century, the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Port-au-Prince became its capital. Alexandre Pétion, the first president of the southern republic, governed from the city in the 1810s. In the 19th century the city grew along the bay and up the hills toward Pétion-Ville, and merchants built wooden houses in the gingerbread style.

Rhum Barbancourt, founded in Port-au-Prince, distills rum from pure sugarcane juice and ages it in oak casks. Brasserie Nationale d'Haïti brews Prestige beer in the city. The port of Port-au-Prince handles the imports of the country and ships coffee, mangoes and essential oils.

The Iron Market, made of iron in France in the late 19th century, sells food, crafts and religious objects under its red towers. The Hotel Oloffson, a gingerbread mansion, was the model for the hotel in Graham Greene's novel The Comedians. The Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, built partly underground beside the main square, shows the history of the country and an anchor said to come from the Santa María of Christopher Columbus. Tap-taps, painted buses and pickup trucks with religious and sports scenes, carry passengers through the city.