L'HERMINIER PAVILION

This colonial-style brick house, dating from 1871, features a metal structure and volcanic stone staircase. It features a stepped stoop leading to the gallery, made of small cast-iron columns and jagged balconies. Felix Louis Lherminier (1779-1833), after studying chemistry and botany, decided to settle in Guadeloupe in 1798. Here he met his future wife, who would go on to bear him 6 children, including Ferdinand-Joseph (1802-1866), who shared the same passion as his father. After becoming a pharmacist in Marie-Galante, he sent various plants, animals and minerals to the Paris Museum. In 1809, during a voyage to France, he was taken prisoner by the English. However, he was able to return to Guadeloupe in 1819. He was then appointed King's Naturalist. His son, Ferdinand-Joseph, an ornithologist and botanist like his father, distinguished himself by his courage during a cholera epidemic in 1865, when he served as physician at the Pointe-à-Pitre hospital. He was awarded the Légion d'Honneur a year later.

The museum was destroyed in the devastating cyclone of 1928. It was rebuilt with an extra level. Until 1960, all kinds of specimens could be seen there (fossils, insects, whalebones, rocks, but also Amerindian axes). The Salle des délibérations housed Doctor L'Herminier's natural history collections. The building, now emptied of its collections, has been listed as a historic monument since 2008.