Citadelle Laferrière
Mountain fortress built after Haitian independence, the largest fortification in the Americas.
The Citadelle Laferrière stands on the Bonnet à l'Évêque, a peak of about 900 metres above Milot in northern Haiti. Henry Christophe, a leader of the revolution and later King Henry I, commissioned it in 1805, a year after Haiti declared independence, to hold the interior against any French attempt to restore colonial rule and slavery. Tens of thousands of labourers, many of them formerly enslaved, worked on it until its completion in 1820. Its walls rise some forty metres from the rock.
The fortress covers roughly 10,000 square metres and was provisioned with cisterns and storehouses for a garrison of several thousand for a year. Some 365 cannon, taken from arms abandoned by European forces, remain in the batteries with stacked piles of shot. Christophe died in 1820 and was entombed within one of the courtyards. The Citadelle was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1982 with Sans-Souci and the Ramiers, and has been repaired since the 1980s with international assistance.
Highlights
- Commissioned in 1805 by Henry Christophe to defend Haitian independence
- Ramparts rising about 40 metres, with batteries of 365 historic cannon
- Tomb of Henry Christophe within an interior courtyard
- UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982 with Sans-Souci and the Ramiers
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