See also: Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis , Ndar in language ouolof, is the second Ville Senegal. It is often called “Saint-Louis of Senegal”.

Geography

History

It was founded in 1659, in a island of the Fleuve Senegal, long and broad, by sailors of Dieppe (Normandy) and 2 300 m kilometers was thus baptized in the honor of the king de France Saint Louis and also, through the saint king his ancestor and homonym, the reigning sovereign Louis XIV. It was the first city rested by Europeans in Western Africa and became the political Capitale of the French colony and the French Western Africa, until in 1902, then capital of the Senegal and the Mauritania. It remained a counter of important French trade until in 1957. The July 2nd 1816, the Jellyfish , frigate of three masts transporting to Saint-Louis the new governor of Senegal, with 400 people on board, made shipwreck on the coasts of Mauritania, being failed in sands of the bench of Arguin, in the north of Saint-Louis. This episode was immortalisé by the painter Theodore Géricault in the raft of the Jellyfish (Musée of Louvre). Pierre Loti lived with “32 rue Marge” in a house and it wrote there its Roman of a spahi .

The airport of Saint-Louis was used by the French aviator Jean Mermoz, of 1927 until in 1936, the year of its disappearance. It landed there for the first time the May 27th 1927. He always slept in room 219 with the Post office building, and this room became a mythical place for nostalgic adventure of the Aéropostale.

Culture

Saint-Louis, which one called “Venice African” is classified with the repertory of the world heritage by UNESCO since the year 2000. It launched out in an ambitious programme of restoration of its old buildings and started to transform the warehouses into restaurants and hotels.

The city preserves very many houses, typical of the colonial time, with their lime frontage, their double roof in tile, their balcony out of wooden and their wrought iron balustrade.

The music Jazz, brought by the American soldiers, at the time of the Second world war, made hatch a whole generation of jazzmen African. The International festival of Jazz of Saint-Louis was created in 1992 and knew beginning May 2004, its twelfth edition.

At the time of the procession of the Lamp, the inhabitants, ravel with the sound of the Tam-tam, while carrying lampions which they made and which resemble those that the slaves of the 17th century carried to light the Signare S until the midnight mass.

Economy

Saint-Louis lost all its importance at the time of independence to the profit of the new capital Dakar which moreover attracted with it all its intellectuals and all its civils servant. The city then fell in lethargy.

The community of the fishermen of Saint-Louis east one of most important of the West Africa and includes/understands more than 4.000 crews. Guet Ndar is the district of the fishermen, where live more than 25.000 people, on a narrow sand language. It is today the most important economic activity of the city.

Of 1996 with 2004, the number of hotel rooms doubled, according to the tourist office.

Tourist monuments and top-places

  • the historical quarters (the island Saint Louis), connected by a metallic bridge to seven arches, the Bridge Faidherbe, with the districts of the island of SOR. The plans of this bridge are allotted to twists with Gustave Eiffel.

  • the seat of the governorship is built on the site of old extremely colonial whose some walls remain.
  • ornithological reserves of the National park of the Language of Cruelty and the National park of the birds of Djoud.
  • the “Rose House”, a sumptuous house of hosts, roomy and refined, opened in 2003 within the framework of the renovation projects.

Évêché

Twinnings

Personalities born in Saint-Louis

El hadj Ousseynou Diouf footballer

See too

Internal bonds

Random links:Benito Juárez | Arre (river) | Vladislav Tretiak | Dorgali | Tiyi-Meryaset

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