Audioguides Port Louis

Port Louis was an uninhabited island port until Dutch settlers arrived in 1606, calling the harbour Tortoise Bay for reasons that are now self-explanatory. The French transformed it into a proper city from 1736, naming it after King Louis XV and building the Government House that still stands, making it one of the oldest colonial buildings in sub-Saharan Africa. When the French lost Mauritius to Britain in 1810, the British kept everything: the French street names, the Code Napoleon legal system, the language, and the produce market near the waterfront that has occupied the same site for centuries.

The city's Chinatown, established by Hakka Chinese immigrants who began arriving in 1826, remains one of the most intact in Africa and the Indian Ocean region.

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1908, still operates on Rue du Dragon. Within walking distance are the Jummah Mosque, the Cathedral of Saint James, and several Hindu temples, which is the compressed multiculturalism that Mauritian independence politics have worked with rather than against since 1968. The Blue Penny Museum holds two rare stamps, a 1-penny orange and a 2-penny blue from 1847, that philatelists consider among the most valuable in the world.