Diego Suarez — one of the world's great natural harbours at Madagascar's forgotten northern tip
Antsiranana, still widely known by its French colonial name Diego Suarez, sits at the tip of a peninsula enclosing one of the world's three largest natural harbours. The Emerald Sea (Mer d'Emeraude) bay delivers extraordinary snorkelling, while inland Tsingy Rouge (red spire-eroded laterite) and Cap d'Ambre, Madagascar's northernmost point, draw adventurous travellers. The city retains Art Deco colonial buildings and an easy cosmopolitan pace.
The bay was first sighted by Portuguese explorer Diogo Soares in 1543 — Diego Suarez is a corruption of his name. France annexed the northern peninsula in 1885, using the natural harbour as its main naval base in the Indian Ocean; the town's Art Deco architecture dates from the 1920s–30s French naval expansion. British and South African troops briefly occupied it in 1942 (Operation Ironclad) to prevent a Japanese naval presence, one of the few Allied offensives in Madagascar during WWII.