The World's Smallest Capital — granite boulders, coco de mer palms, Creole fish curry at the Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market, and the Indian Ocean's most otherworldly archipelago
Victoria is the capital of the Seychelles and the smallest capital city in the world, home to roughly 26,000 people on the island of Mahé in the Indian Ocean. The city's most visible landmark is a miniature replica of London's Big Ben clock tower at the central roundabout — a vestige of British colonial rule — surrounded by a busy market, Hindu temples, mosques, and the Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market where Seychellois women sell coco de mer nuts, fresh tuna, octopus, and jackfruit. Creole cuisine is the island's defining food culture: ladob (banana or breadfruit cooked in coconut cream), oct…
The Seychelles were uninhabited when Arab traders first mapped them in the 9th century CE, and remained so until the French established a settlement on Mahé in 1770 — unusually, these islands were among the last habitable places on earth to be permanently settled by humans. The French brought enslaved African workers to cultivate the islands, and the Seychellois Creole culture and language that developed is a direct product of that population. Britain seized the islands from France during the Napoleonic Wars in 1810, and the islands were formally ceded in 1814. The 1835 abolition of slavery b…