Object description

Fort Cépérou was a fort that protected the city of Cayenne, French Guiana. The original wooden fort was built on a hill looking over the mouth of the Cayenne River in 1643. Over the years that followed the French temporarily lost the site to the Dutch, English and Portuguese. The fort was torn down and rebuilt several times. Between 1689 and 1693 the whole town of Cayenne, including the fort, was surrounded by a classic line of fortifications by Vauban. The town was occupied by the Portuguese during the Napoleonic wars between 1809 to 1817 and Vauban's fortifications were destroyed, as were the bastions of the fort. Little remains of the fort today.