🇷🇪 Reunion
Saint-Denis
Saint-Denis is the capital of Réunion — a French overseas region (département et région d'outre-mer) and island in the Indian Ocean, 800 km east of Madagascar, 174 km southwest of Mauritius, with a population of 890,000. Réunion is simultaneously a full department of France (French citizens, Euro currency, French public services, EU territory) and one of the most geologically dramatic islands on Earth — the island is formed by two shield volcanoes: the Piton de la Fournaise (2,632 m, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupting on average 2-3 times per year with accessible lava flows), and the ancient Piton des Neiges (3,070 m, the highest peak in the Indian Ocean, dormant). The island has three calderas: the Cirque de Cilaos, the Cirque de Mafate and the Cirque de Salazie — enormous collapsed volcanic craters encircled by vertical walls of 500-1,000 m, each containing a traditional creole village community isolated by the terrain (Mafate has no road access — it can only be reached on foot or by helicopter). The UNESCO World Heritage Site (Réunion National Park, 2010, covering 40% of the island including all three cirques and the Piton de la Fournaise lava fields) is the most dramatic insular landscape in the world after Hawaii's Big Island. Saint-Denis itself is a French colonial town with the finest Creole colonial architecture of any Indian Ocean island — the Barachois waterfront, the Tamil Hindu temples (the Réunionnais Hindu community is 20-25% of the population, descended from indentured labourers brought from southern India after the abolition of slavery in 1848), the museums and the Creole cuisine (the finest fusion of French, African, Indian and Chinese cooking in the Indian Ocean).