Le Morne Cultural Landscape

Introduction

Le Morne Cultural Landscape is one of the newest sites on the Unesco World Heritage List (as of 2008). It mainly consists of a rugged mountain on the edge of the Indian Ocean in the southwest of Mauritius. It was used as a shelter by runaway slaves through the 18th and early years of the 19th centuries. Here, they wre protected by the mountain’s isolated, wooded and almost inaccessible cliffs. The slaves formed small settlements in the caves and on the summit of Le Morne. Mauritius unfortunately was an important stopover in the eastern slave trade and also became known as the “Maroon republic” because of the large number of escaped slaves who lived in Le Morne.

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