![]() ![]() Or populate the streets of your imagination with les maisons portugaises (houses in the Portuguese style) facing the street, each heavy wooden door flanked by two small windows, the door opening to reveal an interior courtyard with a veranda along which the rooms are aligned. Imagine narrow streets that stretch before you to the tip of the island, modest two-story houses whose stucco walls are painted in eye-soothing shades of rose and yellow, roofs sheathed in terra-cotta tiles, houses whose delicate wrought-iron balconies insist that the eye linger to trace their curves. The city’s classic French-colonial architecture-much of which dates from the mid-19th century-has been so fully preserved that, in 2000, UNESCO declared Ile Saint-Louis a World Heritage Site. But in recent years the clouds have begun to part in the lack of new development, the city’s residents have discovered the proverbial silver lining. What was in place remained little or nothing changed. But as the 20th century unfolded, the action shifted elsewhere, and the river port of Saint-Louis was eclipsed by the deepwater port of Dakar. Urbanized in the mid-1800s, the city claimed pride of place as the capital of French West Africa from 1895 to 1902 and as the capital of Sénégal from 1840 to 1958. The first French settlement in Africa, Saint-Louis rose to prominence because it dominated the river on which ivory, gold, gum arabic and, for a time, slaves flowed to Europe and the Americas. In Saint-Louis, bright African colors dance before your eyes, smells rising from the kitchens tell of spices rarely used here and the rhythms of the day are dictated by the departure and arrival of fishermen who go to sea in pirogues, sturdy oversized canoes made of heavy African woods. Louises are separated by more than 4,600 miles-and by cultures that are worlds apart. ![]() Though the likenesses are striking, the two St. The sounds of Wolof will tie an English-speaking tongue in knots-a first sign of difference. But for perspective? Say aloud the word N’Dar, the name given to Saint-Louis in Wolof, the most common of the 15 or so tribal languages spoken in Sénégal. Indeed, Sister Cities International recognized the likeness and formally joined the two. Louis have so much in common that it’s tempting to cite their similarities and come to a full stop. The American and African incarnations of St. Saint-Louis hosts, every year in May, an international jazz festival that is one of the most highly anticipated events of its kind in Africa. Louis was one of the birthplaces of jazz. In Saint-Louis, the locals celebrate Jean Mermoz, another former mail pilot who climbed into Le Croix du Sud on May 12, 1930, for the first solo crossing of the South Atlantic.īoth cities lay claim to music, particularly the blues and jazz, as part of their heritage. Louis on May 20, 1927, for the first solo flight across the North Atlantic. Here we celebrate Charles Lindbergh, a one-time mail pilot who climbed into the Spirit of St. Saint-Louis rose in 1659 on a site near the Mauritanian border, where Louis Caullier established an outpost on an island near where the Sénégal River flows into the Atlantic Ocean.īoth cities are closely associated with the heroic age of flight, when aviators compensated for the shortcomings of their equipment with personal bravery that bordered on mania. Louis lies just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, a site chosen in 1763 by Pierre Laclède when he made his way upriver from New Orleans to establish a new outpost. ![]() Both owe their origins to French explorers who, in the 17th and 18th centuries, coursed the great waterways of the world in search of land that would enrich la patrie-and trade opportunities that would line their pockets. So much alike that the parallels are uncanny-and yet so very, very different.īoth cities owe their names to the crusading French king canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1297. ![]()
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