It's a backward city, but it's no backwater. It's chaos inside, packed with stalls, vendors and piles of fruit, baskets, soap, religious totems and toys. It's hot, noisy and likely to overwhelm the faint of heart. There are areas of the capital travelers should avoid, chiefly the shantytowns on the northern edge of the city.
Galleries sell Haitian art, and restaurants serve some of the best French cuisine in the country.
You can taste samples and buy bottles at bargain prices. This old coffee port was once the jewel of the southern coast, decorated in French colonial architecture and fringed with black-sand beaches. Duvalier cut off its trade in the 1950s and sent the town into a decades long decline. Many now house galleries and shops. Jacmel has a bustling market , open on Saturdays.