Culture and history info

Cap-Haïtien is known as the nation's largest center of historic monuments; it is a tourist destination. The calm water of the bay, picturesque Caribbean beaches and monuments have made it a resort and vacation destination for Haïti's upper classes, comparable to Pétionville. Cap-Haïtien has also attracted more international tourists, as it has been isolated from the political instability in the south of the island.

It has a wealth of French colonial architecture, which has been well preserved. During and after the Haitian Revolution, many craftsmen from Cap-Haïtien, who were free people of color, fled to French-controlled New Orleans. As a result, the two cities share many similarities in styles of architecture. Especially notable are the gingerbread houses lining the city's older streets.
Occupied for thousands of years by indigenous peoples, who had migrated from present-day Central and South America, the island was colonized in the 16th century by Spanish explorers. Due to the chance introduction of new infectious diseases, as well as poor treatment of the indigenous peoples, their population rapidly declined. On the nearby coast Columbus founded his first community in the New World, the short-lived La Navidad. In 1975, researchers found near Cap-Haïtien another of the first Spanish towns of Hispaniola: Puerto Real was founded in 1503. It was abandoned in 1578, and its ruins were discovered in the twentieth century.[3]

A street scene in Cap Haitien The French took over half of the island of Hispaniola from the Spanish in the early eighteenth century. They established large sugar cane plantations on the northern plains and imported tens of thousands of African slaves to work them. Cap-Francais became an important city of the French colonial period; it served as the capital of the French colony of Saint-Domingue from its founding in 1711 until 1770, when the capital was moved to Port-au-Prince in the southwest part of the island. After the slave revolution, this was the first capital of the Kingdom of Northern Haiti under King Henri Christophe, when the nation was split apart.
The central area of the city is between the Bay of Cap-Haïtien to the east and nearby mountainsides to the west; these are increasingly dominated by flimsy urban slums. The streets are generally narrow and arranged in grids. As a legacy of the United States' occupation of Haïti from 1915 to 1934, Cap-Haïtien's north-south streets were renamed as single letters (beginning with Rue A, a major avenue) and going to "Q" and its east-west streets with numbers from 1 to 26; the system is not followed outside the central city. The historic city has numerous markets, churches, and low-rise apartment buildings (of three–four storeys), constructed primarily before and during the U.S. occupation, with much of the infrastructure in need of repair. Many such buildings have balconies on the upper floors, which overlook the narrow streets below. With people eating outside on the balconies, there is an intimate communal atmosphere during dinner hours.