What if Heritage Days started right around the corner from your home?

European Heritage Days
To celebrate Heritage Days 2026, Richès Karayib, in collaboration with Martinique’s Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DAC), invites everyone to explore the island’s historic monuments using its interactive heritage map.
You don’t always have to travel across Martinique to make a discovery.
Just a few blocks from home, there may be a church whose history you’re unaware of. Along a road you travel every week, an old house may tell the story of several centuries of economic and social change. A public building, a market, a distillery, or the remains of an industrial site may be part of our protected heritage without those who pass by them every day even realizing it.
That is precisely what the European Heritage Days remind us of every year: heritage isn’t just what we visit. It’s also what surrounds us.

Heritage Days—Start with Your Local Community

For the 2026 European Heritage Days, the interactive map developed by Richès Karayib makes it very easy to change your perspective. You can start by searching for your town and discovering the historic monuments protected there. Then see what’s in the neighboring town. And, as you make one discovery after another, gradually expand your itinerary. In total, the tool features 122 historic monuments spread across 29 municipalities.
The point is precisely to showcase a side of Martinique that isn’t always seen from this perspective: its religious buildings, homes, forts, civil structures, traces of industrial activity, and the remnants left behind by the major events that have shaped the island.

Choose a story rather than a destination

For those who don’t know where to start, six itineraries offer a different way to explore Martinique. The 1902 eruption allows visitors to follow in the footsteps of one of the major turning points in Martinique’s history. The Rum Trail puts plantations, distilleries, and sugarcane-related heritage into context. The Sacred Heritage tour invites you to see churches and religious buildings in a new light. The forts illustrate the strategic position Martinique has held over the centuries.
City centers offer a chance to rediscover buildings we sometimes walk past without even looking up.
Finally, the legacy of slavery invites us to explore the sites that bear witness to this history and its impact on Martinique’s heritage. The map can thus be used to plan an entire day’s outing, or simply to choose one or two places to explore near home.
“I’d like the map to evoke that little moment of surprise: ‘I’ve been walking past this for years and didn’t even know it was a historic landmark.’ Because we often know places without really knowing their history.”
Sabrina Ajax, founder of Richès Karayib.

A Heritage to Share

The exploration doesn’t end with the JEP. Available for free year-round in the RK Patrimoine section of richeskarayib.com, the map is offered in French, English, and Spanish so that Martinique’s heritage can also be discovered and understood by visitors to the island as well as by Caribbean and international audiences. The European Heritage Days can therefore serve as a starting point.

Choose a town. Pick a place. Read about its history. Then go see it. And maybe, on the way home, you’ll start to see that building you’ve always walked past in a slightly different light.

European Heritage Days

The Richès Karayib interactive heritage map brings together 122 historic monuments spread across 29 municipalities in Martinique. It allows users to search for sites by municipality and discover churches, homes, forts, civil buildings, distilleries, and industrial ruins.

For the 2026 European Heritage Days, Richès Karayib’s interactive map lets you search for a town, identify nearby historic landmarks, and create your own itinerary. Six themed routes also let you explore the 1902 eruption, the Rum Route, sacred heritage, forts, city centers, and the legacy of slavery.

The interactive map of Martinique’s historic monuments is available for free year-round in the RK Patrimoine section of Richès Karayib. Available in French, English, and Spanish, it allows both residents and visitors to explore Martinique’s heritage and plan their visits, particularly during the 2026 Heritage Days.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More articles from RK

Silver Magellan Award 2026 logo awarded to Martinique for its culinary heritage
CULINARY ART
Tolotra

2026 Silver Magellan Award: Martinique Showcases Its Cuisine on the International Stage

Martinique has just won a 2026 Silver Magellan Award for its culinary heritage. Presented by Travel Weekly, this award honors the Martinique Tourism Board in the category of Caribbean culinary destinations. This international recognition highlights the island’s flavors, its culinary expertise, and a growing ambition: to make Martinican cuisine a true travel experience. 2026 Silver Magellan Award: An Accolade for Martinican Cuisine The results of the 2026 Travel Weekly Magellan Awards are now available on the competition’s official website. Martinique is among the winners, having received a silver medal in the “Caribbean – Overall Destinations – Culinary Destination” category. The Martinique Tourism Committee’s (CMT) entry, titled “Martinique: Where Culinary Heritage Comes to Life,” highlights a destination where culinary heritage continues to thrive and be passed down through the generations. Organized by the U.S. trade publication Travel Weekly, the Magellan Awards recognize achievements in various areas of international tourism. Entries are

Read More »
09/10/2026 No Comments
St. George's Cathedral in Georgetown, Guyana, a wooden Anglican church
TOURISM
Tolotra

St. George’s Cathedral in Georgetown: 43.5 meters of wood after the brick

St. George’s Cathedral in Georgetown, Guyana, is approximately 43.5 meters tall and is built of wood. Consecrated on November 8, 1894, it replaced a brick cathedral, completed in 1842, whose tower was deemed too heavy for its foundations. Its history is that of a building made of greenheart, a hardwood native to Guyana, which the diocese must continue to protect. In January 2015, Dean Paul Andrew Carto, rector of St. George’s Cathedral in Georgetown, Guyana, warned that the building’s problems would not be solved by barbecues and bake sales. That statement sums up the challenge facing this landmark. In Georgetown, St. George’s Anglican Church is a large, 43.5-meter-tall wooden structure, and wood requires constant maintenance. St. George’s Cathedral, a 43.5-meter-tall wooden structure in Georgetown St. George’s Cathedral in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, stands on Church Street and is approximately 43.5 meters, or 143 feet, tall. The UNESCO Tentative List

Read More »
09/10/2026 No Comments
cinémas caribéens
FILM & VIDEO
Tolotra

S6/10 – Stories of Caribbean Cinema, Dancehall, Memory, and Cuban Satire. Texts by Guillaume Robillard. Ciclic, 2026.

We’ve reached the halfway point of the series “Stories of Caribbean Cinema.” The first four episodes have spanned nearly three decades of cinema, from Cuba in the 1960s to productions from Martinique and Curaçao in the 1980s. This fifth installment moves into the 1990s with two films set in very different worlds. Euzhan Palcy’s *Siméon* delves into a Caribbean imagination where music, ghosts, and magical realism converge. Raoul Peck’s *The Man on the Quay* revisits François Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti through the eyes of a child. You are now reading the fifth episode in a series of ten. Four episodes have already been published on Richès Karayib, and five more will follow in this series through 2025. 1997: JAMAICA – “DANCEHALL QUEEN” BY RICK ELGOOD & DON LETTS Dancehall Queen is one of many Jamaican films that follow the formula established by *The Harder They Come* (Perry Henzell, 1972): Jamaican

Read More »
08/10/2026 No Comments

conTACT RK

we'd love to have your feedback on your experience so far

Join The List

Join our Richès Karayib community!  Sign up for our newsletter.

No thanks.

Want To Maximize Your Business Presence On Riches Karayib?

Complete the form to start the application