France in the Caribbean — Josephine's birthplace where Art Nouveau iron-lace balconies meet Creole rum distilleries and the volcanic slopes of Mount Pelée loom above it all
Fort-de-France is the capital and largest city of Martinique — a French overseas department in the eastern Caribbean, with a population of 90,000 in the city and 350,000 on the island. It is the most French city in the Caribbean: a market square flanked by the iron-lace Bibliothèque Schœlcher (an Art Nouveau library imported piece-by-piece from Paris in 1889) and the Palais de Justice, with bakeries selling pain au chocolat beside roti shops selling Creole colombo curry. Martinique's interior is dominated by the volcanic Mount Pelée (1,397m), whose 1902 eruption destroyed the then-capital Sai…
Martinique was Arawak and Carib territory before French colonisation in 1635 — the French converted it into one of the most profitable sugar colonies in the Americas, driven by enslaved African labour under the Code Noir. The island's most famous child is Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie, born in 1763 near present-day Trois-Îlets across the bay from Fort-de-France: better known as Joséphine de Beauharnais, she became Napoleon's first wife and Empress of the French (her statue in La Savane park has been repeatedly beheaded by Martiniquans who blame her for Napoleon's reinstatement o…