"Hardly had we landed, that we were on the Square Bertin, a true stroll planted with trees alongside the sea. Immediately, we had the sensation of being in the centre of an intense commercial city, which seemed to come from the closeness to feverish America."
(Notes from a Traveler, Le Pélerin, 20th May 1902.)
Saint-Pierre "Small-Paris" of the Antilles : a European city in the Tropics.
First city built by French in 1635, Saint-Pierre acquires as of his first years, a considerable importance in the life of the colony. Buccaneers' landmark, then high place of the traffic of slaves feeding the plantations, the city develops quickly around the trade of the exotic products (indigo, coffee, sugar...) which makes the fortune of the island at the XVIIIeme century. Its traders enriched by the commercial monopoly from which they profit with the importation as with export control the essence of the island's economy and extend soon their domination to the remainder of the Caribbean. In a few years, they make of Saint-Pierre, the French port most significant of the area. Under their influence, the city changes and is Europeanized. Uprooted in the Tropics, they try, successfully, to reproduce a way of life close to that which they knew in France. The huts out of wooden assembled by the first colonists thus gradually leave the place to solids houses of city out of freestones, while the streets are paved, and that the many rivers which spout out Mount - Pelé and the hills surrounding ones are exploited to create a vast network of gutters and fountains which attenuate the heavy atmosphere of the flooded sun streets. At the end of the XIXème century, the city obtains a street lighting functioning with electricity and discovers the utility of the telephone. A tramway cross the city from north to south and connects the place of Mouillage to the Guerin factory, located with the mouth of the Blanche river.
A town of labour but also of pleasures
The pleasures are not forgotten. The good company of the Saint-Pierre city is found with the theatre built in 1786 to be used as scene with the troops which one makes come from France. The small people which revolve around the port, as well as the sailors and soldiers of passage give appointment in the many taverns and brothels installed in the small lanes heights of the city. Each year, it is the same ritual, a collective madness seizes Saint-Pierre to the approach of the carnival. Work ceases, the whole population dances and sings in the streets at the rhythm of the rum drums and bottles which one emerges, before going in merry bands to finish the reunions at the lake of palmistes, in top of Mount-Pelé.
“At Saint-Pierre, local dances began as soon as the ascetic feasts of the Lent were ending. From Easter Sunday, dance halls were opening. Clarinets and trombones were letting out everywhere their clear and joyful notes. They invited people from Saint-Pierre to forget their little troubles in the temples of Terpsichore. They were absolutely crazy about dance, my dear compatriots! It’s why there were numerous establishments where people could mess around the Saturday from 9 P.M. to 5 P.M.”
Salvina, “Saint-Pierre : the tropical Venice (1870-1902).
Saint-Pierre "Small-Paris" of the Antilles : a European city in the Tropics.
First city built by French in 1635, Saint-Pierre acquires as of his first years, a considerable importance in the life of the colony. 
