40 Fun Facts About Guadeloupe

Seen from above, Guadeloupe's two main islands together form the shape of which creature?

A butterfly is how Guadeloupe looks from the air: a mountainous western wing and a flatter eastern wing, split by a narrow sea channel.

Which tropical fruit did Christopher Columbus first encounter on Guadeloupe in November 1493?

Pineapple was new to the Old World when Columbus met it on Guadeloupe. He carried the plant back across the Atlantic and called it the pine of the Indians.

Which BBC crime series films its fictional island of Saint Marie in Deshaies on Guadeloupe?

Death in Paradise turns the commune of Deshaies into the town of Honoré, and the show's popularity has helped to bring more tourists to Guadeloupe.

Which currency do shoppers use on Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France in the Caribbean?

The euro is Guadeloupe's money because the islands are legally part of France and the European Union, although they sit outside the Schengen travel area.

In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France gave up which vast territory but won back sugar-rich Guadeloupe?

Canada was judged the lesser prize. Guadeloupe produced about £6 million of sugar a year, and France considered the small island colony the more valuable of the two.

Which Guadeloupe-born judo heavyweight helped light the cauldron at the 2024 Paris Olympics?

Teddy Riner, born in Les Abymes, lit the cauldron in the Tuileries Garden and then won his third individual Olympic gold in the over-100 kg class at the same Games.

Which Guadeloupe-born defender scored both France goals in the 1998 World Cup semi-final?

Lilian Thuram scored the only two goals of his long international career that night, after his own mistake had let Croatia take the lead.

Which French ocean explorer gives his name to the marine reserve around Guadeloupe's Pigeon Islands?

Jacques Cousteau found the reefs in 1959 while testing his diving saucer and asked for the site to be protected. Local traders soon attached his name to it.

Which Scandinavian kingdom was handed Guadeloupe by Britain in 1813 and gave it back a year later?

Sweden received 24 million francs from Britain when the island returned to France. The money became the Guadeloupe Fund, which paid the Swedish royal house until 1983.

Which Guadeloupe-born sprinter won both the 200 metres and 400 metres at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

Marie-José Pérec was only the second woman to complete that Olympic double. She had left Guadeloupe for Paris at 16 and won three Olympic golds in all.

Guadeloupe's Indigenous people called the islands Karukera, a name usually translated as what?

Island of beautiful waters was the Arawakan-speaking islanders' own name for their home. Columbus replaced it in 1493 with the name of a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

Columbus named Guadeloupe in 1493 after a shrine to the Virgin Mary in which country?

Spain is home to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, which gave the island its name. Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe dates from 1531, well after Columbus.

Which city is the capital of Guadeloupe, although Pointe-à-Pitre is its main business centre?

Basse-Terre holds the prefecture, yet Guadeloupe's commerce runs through Pointe-à-Pitre. It shares its name with the mountainous western island on which it stands.

Which narrow strait, about 7.5 km long, separates Guadeloupe's two main islands?

Rivière Salée translates as salt river, but it is an arm of the sea, linking the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin in the north to the Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin in the south.

Gwo ka, the folk music born among Guadeloupe's enslaved Africans, is built around which instruments?

Hand drums give gwo ka its name, Creole for big drum. When the enslaved were forbidden drums, singers are thought to have imitated the beat with a vocal technique called bouladjèl.

Which dance music genre did Kassav', a band formed by Guadeloupean musicians in 1979, pioneer?

Zouk grew out of Kassav's wish to modernise the island's traditional music by blending it with contemporary influences, keeping Guadeloupe's gwoka rhythm at its root.

Which poet and diplomat born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Saint-John Perse was the pseudonym of Alexis Leger, who published his poetry under an invented name while he worked as a French diplomat.

Which Guadeloupean novelist won the 2018 New Academy Prize, a one-off alternative to the Nobel?

Maryse Condé, the youngest of eight children from Pointe-à-Pitre, was praised by the jury as a grand storyteller of the ravages of colonialism.

Which Guadeloupe-born composer, the son of an enslaved woman, was also a celebrated fencer in Paris?

Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, won a fencing contest that earned him a place in the king's guard. He was a contemporary of Mozart.

Which abolitionist wrote the 1848 French decree that ended slavery in Guadeloupe?

Victor Schœlcher wrote the decree as under-secretary of state for the colonies, and it also made the freed people citizens. His remains now lie in the Panthéon in Paris.

What device did the revolutionary commissioner Victor Hugues ship to Guadeloupe from France in 1794?

A guillotine came with Hugues, who used it to execute alleged counter-revolutionaries after his expedition retook the colony and abolished slavery there.

Which active volcano on Guadeloupe is the highest peak in the Lesser Antilles?

La Soufrière, also called La Grande Soufrière, rises 1,467 m. In 1976 its tremors forced more than 70,000 people to evacuate before an eruption far milder than predicted.

Which round, flat island of Guadeloupe did Columbus name after his flagship in 1493?

Marie-Galante honours the ship Marigalante, or gallant Mary. Locals call the island the Big Biscuit for its shape, and oxen turned its cane mills before windmills arrived in 1780.

Guadeloupe's island of La Désirade housed sufferers of which disease from the 1700s until the 1950s?

Leprosy patients were sent to a hospital at the island's remote eastern end, where they endured harsh living conditions. The ruins of the colony still stand.

Which mammal, long the emblem of Guadeloupe National Park, turned out to be an introduced species?

Raccoon populations on Guadeloupe were long classed as a unique island species, Procyon minor. Analyses published in 1999 showed they were common raccoons brought in from elsewhere.

Guadeloupe's only endemic bird, an all-black forest species, belongs to which bird family?

Woodpeckers have one species found only on Guadeloupe, known in Creole as the Tapeur, or one who knocks. No other member of the family lives in the Lesser Antilles.

Which island north of Guadeloupe split from its administration in 2007, alongside St Martin?

Saint-Barthélemy voted in 2003 to secede and became a separate French overseas collectivity, although it lies more than 200 km north-west of Guadeloupe.

The solo Route du Rhum yacht race to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe starts from which Breton port?

Saint-Malo sends the fleet off every four years in November. Each sailor crosses the Atlantic single-handed, which makes the race one of French sport's great sailing events.

Which officer led Guadeloupe's 1802 revolt against the return of slavery and died at Matouba?

Louis Delgrès and his followers set off their own gunpowder stores rather than surrender, hoping to take as many of the attacking French troops with them as they could.

Which British admiral defeated a French fleet near Guadeloupe at the 1782 Battle of the Saintes?

George Rodney captured the French flagship and its admiral, de Grasse, ending a planned invasion of Jamaica. The battle is named after Guadeloupe's Îles des Saintes.

Which French ruler restored slavery in Guadeloupe in 1802, after the Revolution had abolished it?

Napoleon sent an expedition under General Richepanse to regain control, and a decree of July 1802 discreetly ordered slavery's return. It lasted until 1848.

Which fruit joins sugar cane as one of Guadeloupe's two main export crops?

Bananas took a heavy blow in September 2017, when Hurricane Maria damaged almost the entire crop on Guadeloupe's main growing island. Farmers called it complete annihilation.

Colombo, a signature dish of Guadeloupe, is the islands' version of what kind of food?

Curry is the closest match for colombo, one of Guadeloupe's typical dishes. From 1854, some 41,000 indentured labourers were brought to the islands from India.

What happens to Vaval, the mascot king of Guadeloupe's carnival, on Ash Wednesday?

He is burned to close the festivities, and everyone parades in black and white to mourn him before the forty days of Lent begin.

The power plant at Bouillante on Guadeloupe makes electricity from which energy source?

Geothermal steam produced by volcanic activity drives the plant. The town itself was once called Fontaines Bouillantes, after its hot springs.

The Tour de Guadeloupe, a stage race founded in 1948 and held each August, is an event in which sport?

Cycling is a passion on the islands, and the race now packs a prologue time trial and eight or nine stages into a route covering most of Guadeloupe.

Which 1989 hurricane passed directly over Guadeloupe before making landfall in South Carolina?

Hugo's eye crossed Guadeloupe with sustained winds of 140 mph, wrecking most of the coconut palms and cane fields. The storm left a deep mark on local memory.

Which German director made a 1977 documentary in a Guadeloupe town emptied by a feared eruption?

Werner Herzog went to find a peasant who had refused to leave and met three men still on the island, one of whom said he was waiting for death. The catastrophe never came.

Which independent island nation lies just to the south of Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles chain?

Dominica owes its name to the Latin for Sunday, the day Columbus first sighted it in November 1493, shortly before he reached Guadeloupe.

Guadeloupe belongs to which island group in the northern part of the Lesser Antilles?

The Leeward Islands are so called because they lie downwind of the prevailing trade winds, which blow out of the north-east.