Historical Places in Mauritius

Aapravasi Ghat in Port Louis is where the indenture system began, and for most Indian visitors it is the single most affecting stop on the island. Between 1834 and 1920 close to half a million labourers arrived here from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Bengal, were processed in the depot, and were sent on to the sugar estates. UNESCO listed it in 2006. What survives is partial: the stone steps up from the harbour, the immigration shed, the hospital block and the kitchen. Allow an hour, and take the free guided tour if one is running.

Le Morne Brabant is a 556 metre basalt block at the southwestern tip, listed by UNESCO in 2008 as a landscape of maroonage. Escaped slaves sheltered in its caves and on its summit through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Oral tradition holds that a group leapt to their deaths rather than be recaptured; UNESCO records this as tradition rather than documented event, and it is worth repeating that way. The guided hike takes about three hours return.

The Dutch reached Mauritius in 1598 and settled at Vieux Grand Port from 1638, naming the island after Prince Maurits. The stone monument at Grand Port marks the landing point. They introduced sugarcane, deer and the Java monkey, cut out the ebony, and gave up in 1710. The dodo went extinct on their watch. There is little to see beyond the marker and the bay, so pair it with the Mahebourg museum ten minutes away.

The French built a naval arsenal at Baie de l’Arsenal in 1774 to service warships. The lime kiln, the flour mill and the powder store survive in ruins inside what is now a resort estate at Balaclava, on the northwest coast. Access depends on the property, so check on the day rather than assuming. The adjoining Baie aux Tortues is named for the turtles the Dutch found here.

Champ de Mars in Port Louis opened on 25 June 1812, two years after the British took the island. The Mauritius Turf Club that runs it is the oldest horse racing club in the southern hemisphere and the second oldest in the world after Newmarket. The ground was a French army parade square before that, and racing was started partly to settle relations between French settlers and British administrators. The season runs from late March to early December, with meetings on weekends.

Fort Adelaide sits on Petite Montagne above Port Louis, built by the British between 1834 and 1840 and named for William IV’s queen. The British put it there to watch the town as much as the sea: abolition had just been declared and they expected unrest. It is squat, Moorish in style, and never fired a shot in anger. Go for the view over the harbour and the Caudan waterfront. The old barracks now hold stalls.

Place d’Armes is the axis of colonial Port Louis, a royal palm avenue running from the waterfront up to Government House. The French laid it out in the eighteenth century; the statue at the top is of Mahe de Labourdonnais, the governor who built the port. Government House behind it is the oldest colonial building still in official use on the island. It is a five minute walk from Aapravasi Ghat, so do the two together.

Eureka House at Moka is an 1830s Creole planter’s mansion with 109 doors and windows, built wide and shuttered to move air before fans existed. It stayed in the Le Clezio family for over a century and opened as a museum in 1986. Inside are colonial furniture, maps, and Indian and Chinese household objects that came in through the port. The garden runs down to the Moka river and a small waterfall.

Chateau de Labourdonnais at Mapou dates from 1856 and was held by the Wiehe family for more than 150 years. It is built entirely of teak in a neo-classical style, with a colonnaded verandah on both floors. The restoration reopened it in 2010 with the rooms dressed as they were. The orchard around it grows over a hundred fruit varieties, and the estate distillery serves rum and lunch.

Domaine des Aubineaux in Curepipe is a colonial house of 1872, lived in by the Guimbeau family until 1993 and now open as the first stop on the island’s tea route. It was among the first houses in Mauritius wired for electricity. The original furniture, photographs and colonial fittings are in place, and the guided tour ends with a tea tasting in the old stables.

Bois Cheri is the oldest tea estate in Mauritius, planted in 1892 in the cool uplands of Savanne district. Tea came to the island as a crop for the British market and stayed on as the local drink, usually taken with vanilla. The visit covers the working factory, a small museum, and a tasting on a terrace above a lake. It is the middle stop on the tea route and the one to pick if you only do one.

Saint Aubin, near Riviere des Anguilles in the south, was a sugar estate house of 1819, moved timber by timber to its present site. It is the last stop on the tea route and the one that feeds you: Creole lunch in the old dining room, plus a rum distillery, a vanilla house and an anthurium greenhouse on the grounds. Book the meal ahead, it is not a walk-in.

L’Aventure du Sucre at Beau Plan is a sugar factory that ran from 1797 until 1999 and reopened as a museum in 2002. The machinery on the floor is the original nineteenth and twentieth century plant, left where it stood. The exhibition covers slavery, indenture and the sugar economy that drove both, which makes it a useful companion to Aapravasi Ghat. Allow ninety minutes. The shop sells unrefined sugars by grade.

The British built five Martello towers along the Mauritian coast in the 1830s, squat stone gun platforms with walls three metres thick on the seaward side. Three survive. The one at La Preneuse on the west coast is restored as a small museum, and the roof still carries the pivot track that let a single cannon swing through 360 degrees. They were built to guard against a French return that never came.

The National History Museum at Mahebourg, often called the Naval Museum, occupies the eighteenth century house where wounded British and French officers were nursed side by side after the Battle of Grand Port in 1810, the only naval battle France won against Britain in that war. Inside are ship models, charts of the Indian Ocean, and skeletons of the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire. Note this is a different museum from the Natural History Museum in Port Louis.

St Louis Cathedral in Port Louis stands on a site used for worship since the French laid out the town in the 1730s. The building has been rebuilt several times after cyclones, and the church became a cathedral in 1847. What stands now is a nineteenth century structure with a plain grey stone front and twin towers. It is a short walk from Place d’Armes and open through the day.

The Jummah Masjid on Royal Road in Port Louis was built through the 1850s by Muslim traders, many of them Gujarati, and finished in the 1890s. The carved teak doors and the courtyard mix Mughal, Creole and south Indian workmanship, which is unusual to see in one building. Non-Muslim visitors are welcome outside prayer times. Dress covered, and remove shoes at the courtyard.

Notre Dame Auxiliatrice at Cap Malheureux is the red-roofed church at the northern tip, built in 1938 and one of the most photographed buildings on the island. The cape is named for the shipwrecks off it and for the British landing of 1810 that ended French rule. From the churchyard you can see Coin de Mire and the northern islets. Check the noticeboard for current opening hours rather than relying on published ones.

The Mauritius Postal Museum sits in the old General Post Office at the Port Louis waterfront, a Victorian stone building put up between 1865 and 1870. The museum opened in 2001 and covers the island’s mail and telegraph history from 1772 onward: sorting equipment, uniforms, pillar boxes and a philatelic gallery. The famous 1847 Post Office stamps are not here, they are at the Blue Penny Museum a few minutes away.

The Mauritius Photography Museum is a small private collection in Port Louis, assembled by photographer Tristan Breville and his family. It holds nineteenth century cameras, glass plates and prints, including some of the earliest photographs taken of Mauritius, plus press equipment and stereoscopic film. It is run by hand rather than by roster, so opening is irregular. Call ahead or ask your hotel to check.

La Nef at Souillac is a cottage built of coral blocks, given to the poet Robert Edward Hart and opened as a museum in 1967, twenty-three years after his death. Hart wrote in French and is read in Mauritian schools. Four small rooms hold his letters, manuscripts, spectacles, violin and library. The clifftop setting above the southern coast is the real reason to stop.

The bronze of Paul and Virginie stands outside the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi at Pamplemousses. It comes from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s 1788 novel, set on the island and read across Europe, in which the two childhood companions are separated and Virginie drowns in the wreck of the Saint Geran off the north coast. The story shaped how Europe imagined Mauritius for a century. The garden and the SSR Botanical Garden are next to each other.

The Matthew Flinders monument at Baie du Cap on the south coast was unveiled in 2003. Flinders, the English navigator who charted and named Australia, put in here in 1803 unaware that Britain and France were at war again, and was held on the island for six and a half years. The bronze shows him seated in his room of detention with his charts, his flute and his cat Trim. The coastal road to it is worth the drive on its own.

The International Slave Route Monument stands at the foot of Le Morne, a group of carved stones placed in 2009 by artists from countries the slave trade touched. Mauritius took in roughly 160,000 enslaved people from Madagascar, Mozambique and India before abolition in 1835. The monument is deliberately plain and takes ten minutes, but it sets up the Le Morne climb and the Aapravasi Ghat visit properly.

The house at Plaine Verte where Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam lived from the 1930s to the 1960s is kept as a memorial centre, inaugurated in 1987. Ramgoolam trained as a doctor in London, led the movement to independence in 1968 and became the country’s first prime minister. His father had come from Bihar as an indentured labourer. It is a modest Creole house rather than a grand museum, and it is listed National Heritage.

The lighthouse at Pointe aux Caves near Albion has worked since 1910 and is the only operational lighthouse on the island, a 30 metre white tower flashing twice every ten seconds. The cliffs below it are undercut with sea caves that give the point its name. Entry to the tower itself is controlled by the Ports Authority and is not open on demand, but the headland and the sunset view are free to walk.

Saint Gabriel is on Rodrigues, the outer island 650 km northeast of Mauritius and a separate flight, so treat it as a trip of its own rather than a day out. The church was built between 1936 and 1939 by islanders who carried the coral, sand and lime up by hand, and it seats around two thousand. It is the largest church in the Indian Ocean islands and remains the centre of Rodriguan Catholic life.