 were the vision of Henry Christophe, one of Toussaint Louverture's favourite generals, who crowned himself King of Haiti and was a favoured correspondent of abolitionists like William Wilberforce. In terms of scale and setting, Machu Picchu in Peru is probably the only site I've visited that can compare with the Citadelle. In any other country in the world, it would be heaving with tourists, but I've rarely shared with anyone other than parties of local schoolchildren. Tourists have flocked here in the past. In the post-war period the jazz clubs and casinos of Port-au-Prince were rivalled only by those of pre-revolutionary Havana. But in 1957 the long dark years of the Duvalier dictatorship fell over Haiti, casting a shadow it is yet to fully emerge from. Haiti's return to democracy in the 1990s was a fitful one, punctuated by coups and UN peacekeepers, the 2010 earthquake that levelled the capital and killed as many as 300,000 people and last year's unsolved assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. It's a bitter irony for the Haitian people, whose enslaved ancestors beat the French, British empires in the Haitian Revolution and ushered forth the first country in the world to be born from a successful slave revolt. While the current instability caused by Port-au-Prince's gang violence means that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against travel here – a fact that explains its position at the foot of our Caribbean rankings – Haitian civil society groups are doing their best to find a way past the current political impasses. When){kind=link}
Disasters and dictators have kept tourists away from this sleeping Caribbean beauty – but there is hope that could one day change
The best view on Haiti is reached on horseback, past the ruins of a palace that looks like Versailles transposed to the Caribbean. A winding path takes you up a lush mountain that’s crowned with an extraordinary stone battleship called the Citadelle. It is the largest fortress in the Americas, and for more than two centuries has stood as the final guarantor of Haitian independence.
Both fort and palace (the sweetly named Sans Souci) were the vision of Henry Christophe, one of Toussaint Louverture’s favourite generals, who crowned himself King of Haiti and was a favoured correspondent of abolitionists like William Wilberforce.
In terms of scale and setting, Machu Picchu in Peru is probably the only site I’ve visited that can compare with the Citadelle. In any other country in the world, it would be heaving with tourists, but I’ve rarely shared with anyone other than parties of local schoolchildren.
Tourists have flocked here in the past. In the post-war period the jazz clubs and casinos of Port-au-Prince were rivalled only by those of pre-revolutionary Havana. But in 1957 the long dark years of the Duvalier dictatorship fell over Haiti, casting a shadow it is yet to fully emerge from.