ECOMUSEUM OF MARIE-GALANTE - MURAT HOUSE

It was in April 1807, during the last English occupation of Marie-Galante (1805-1815), that Dominique Murat, originally from Aquitaine, and his son Emmanuel, then aged 24, acquired a sugar house belonging to the widow Dumoulier, a resident of Grand-Bourg. At the time, it housed 118 slaves. The Murat family named it Bellevue-Laplaine because of its topographical location on a small coastal eminence overlooking the Caribbean Sea, the nearby island of Dominica and the surrounding cane fields. Legend has it that Murat's young wife, Jeanne Laballe, a former Beaux-Arts student of Marie-Galantaise origin, designed the plans for the splendid white limestone mansion, reminiscent of a Bordeaux vineyard château. In 1839, with its 307 slaves, the dwelling became the largest sugarcane plantation in Guadeloupe. The old dwelling was abandoned during the last third of the 19th^century : the abolition of slavery, competition from sugar beet, the introduction of the steam engine, the creation of central factories, the collapse of world sugar prices... all these events explain why it was abandoned. In 1872, its last owner, Mr. Reponty, installed a steam engine in the vast sugar mill building below the two mills, one an ^18th-century cattle mill and the other a windmill built in 1814 by the Murats. In 1983, the département acquired the estate with a 7-hectare land reserve to house the Marie-Galante Ecomuseum, created in 1979 by a decree of the Conseil Général de la Guadeloupe. The estate is also home to an incredible medicinal garden set in the former animal enclosure. You'll discover varieties of bitter plants, considered to be tonic, digestive and stimulating, external plants used for baths, plants for "mal vant" which treat various ailments... The eco-museum also houses a documentation and reading center, authentic gaulette huts and a large collection of hand tools, pre-industrial technological equipment, various everyday objects, private archive documents and testimonials recorded with tradespeople and holders of the island's popular and naturalistic know-how. The house is located between Grand-Bourg and Capesterre.