Saint Louis is a Beautiful City in Senegal that Thrived for Centuries!

Subscribe To This Site

Saint Louis is a Thrived Historical Site in Senegal!

The heart of the colonial city of Saint Louis, the capital of Saint-Louis Region is located on the border with Mauritania, northwest of Senegal on the island of Ndar where the Senegal River flows into the Atlantic.

People who speak Wolof, the widely spoken language in Senegal call the city Ndar. The city has expanded eastward into the mainland, where it is surrounded by swamps, and over time, it has encroached to the west on the long, narrow sand of Langue de Barbarie peninsula.

The following page is about Saint-Louis and the climate change that affects the region entirely. If you have more information about the area or about any beautiful site in Senegal, please use the form at the bottom to contribute to this page and receive invaluable gifts for doing so. Those gifts are useful and you could use them to better your life. Thanks.

Saint Louis, Saint-Louis, Ndar, Senegal

French traders founded Saint Louis in 1659 on the uninhabited island Ndar and named the city after the French King Louis XIV. For nearly three centuries, the city served as the capital of French West Africa and was one of the most active cities in Africa.

Not only the treasury of the city has been exploited to the benefits of the merchants, but also the slave trade was one kind of the humiliation the citizens have faced for decades and has been the shame of that century.

However, ethnic movements had fierce confrontation to such kind of trade through the years. The European merchants in the city exported slaves (which is indeed a bad trade), ivory, gold, skins, gum Arabic (Arabic gum) and later peanuts to their beneficiaries, the Atlantic merchants.

There was a French-African community in St. Louis during that period. Descendants of local women as well as European merchants became indispensable middlemen in trade between the middle and the upper parts of Senegal and the coast.

French-Africans were not only an important part of the economic life in Saint Louis, but this community constituted and refined urban bicultural status.

Saint Louis' colourful and vivid life except of course the slave trade faded when Senegal became independent in 1960, and Dakar, instead became the capital. Since then, Saint-Louis has struggled to stay upright.

Today, the economy of the city is based on tourism, sugar production, agriculture and fisheries all of which make the foundation of income. However, for many of Saint Louis' residents poverty is an ever present phenomenon.

This leaves a hope that the authorities in Senegal must struggle to address such economical matters for the benefits of the poor. There are about 176,000 inhabitants in Saint Louis.

Saint Louis was on the list of the UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. Many historic building on the island has been furnished as hotels and restaurants. There are many natural sites in Saint-Louis region. Those beautiful sites include:

The cast iron bridge constructed by the French in the 19th century.
The Maka-Diama dam, near the border with Mauritania.
The National Park and the beaches of Langue de Barbarie.
The palace of Baron Roger in the colonial town of Richard-Toll.
The Fauna Reserve of Gueumbeul.
The colonial waterworks of Makhana.
The Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary full of thousands of birds.
Hunting lodges on the Senegal River.

However, Saint-Louis is now extremely subject to flooding from the river, high tides and periodic heavy rainfall. The city's rapid urbanisation and growth has led many poor people to particularly clump together and set up home in parched riverbeds, which is virtually uninhabitable because of the risk of flooding and landslides.

Poor infrastructure and inadequate drainage networks are also part of the problem. With rising sea levels and more extreme downpours events predicted, flooding in Saint Louis will probably become worse in the future.

Repeated floods are disastrous. They have caused water pollution, diseases and more poverty for the already impoverished families and communities in Saint-Louis.

You can comment on this page about Saint Louis in Senegal or write about any other beautiful sites located in Senegal.

To do this, please use the following form and contribute to this page. It is good idea to leave your email address so you can receive any reply to your comments. PLEASE BE ASSURED, no one of the commentators will capture your email address. It is only that the system that will send you notifications about replies to your comments, as this process is automated.

I have some gifts for you too for sharing your words about any beautiful location in Senegal and the affects of global warming on those locations. Thanks.

Have A Great Story About Some Beautiful Sites in the World?

Do you have a great story about any beautiful site in the world? Share it!

Enter Your Title

Tell Us Your Story! [ ? ]

Upload A Picture (optional) [ ? ]

Add Picture Caption (optional)

Author Information (optional)

To receive credit as the author, enter your information below.

Your Name	(first or full name)
Your Location	(ex. City, State, Country)

Submit Your Contribution

Check box to agree to these submission guidelines.

(You can preview and edit on the next page)

Search inside Saint Louis/Ndar or any other beautiful places in Senegal.

You can also enjoy more activities here if you liked this page about Saint Louis in Senegal. Please share it with your services through the buttons here, at the left column of the page and at the bottom of the page.

This could be also additional value to you, as you could experience some social networking technologies and know more. Click on "Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward" at the bottom to know how to link to the website.

I use "Site Build It" tools at the bar below to empower this page about Saint Louis in Senegal and the entire 100 Beautiful Sites in the World. Thanks to those strong website building and optimizing tools.