Discover Port Mathurin: Market and Culture

Port Mathurin combines practical travel information with market life and cultural and historical points of interest. When choosing your destination, it is helpful to distinguish the town itself from the themes of Rodrigues as a whole. This makes it easier to put a stay in Port Mathurin into context without attributing the larger island’s offerings to the town.

Practical information in the town centre

The Rodrigues Tourism Office welcomes travellers in the centre of Port Mathurin, in a renovated old wooden house in the Creole style. The Rodrigues Tourist Office provides bus and tide timetables, as well as schedules for the main events. If this information is important for your planning, check the details for the relevant date.

The Tourism Office has a permanent exhibition featuring important Rodrigues handicrafts and culinary specialities. Educational panels illustrate the island’s history through several key stages. The exhibition and the panels focus on different aspects: the former highlights crafts and culinary products, while the latter cover the main stages of Rodrigues’ historical development.

Market and cultural points of interest

The Port Mathurin market is busiest on Saturdays. If market activity matters to your travel plans, Saturday is therefore a useful point of reference when deciding when to visit. Knowing which day is busiest helps you plan without assuming that a specific event will take place.

Ben Gontran House is located on Barclay Street in Port Mathurin. Nearby is Marie Queen of Rodrigues: the statue of the Virgin Mary stands on the heights of Pointe Canon and is a Catholic gathering place as well as a tourist and historical site. The market, house and statue thus offer different cultural points of interest for exploring Port Mathurin and its surroundings.

Rodrigues as a wider travel destination

Rodrigues, the wider travel destination, is 18 kilometres long and 8 kilometres wide. These dimensions refer to Rodrigues, not Port Mathurin. Sega Tambour is also part of the wider island context: in 2017, this traditional dance of Rodrigues was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

In the southwest of Rodrigues, the François Leguat Reserve lies in a limestone landscape with nine caves and sinkholes. The Grande Caverne in the reserve features impressive limestone formations. The reserve offers guided tours through a valley with hundreds of giant tortoises, tropical birds and tens of thousands of native trees. Four galleries in the reserve’s museum introduce visitors to the natural history of Rodrigues.

The sea and landscape are also part of the wider destination: the Rodrigues region has ten marine protected areas. Mont Limon offers views of Rodrigues’ geological relief, agricultural terraces and the ocean. These natural and landscape features complement Port Mathurin’s local attractions with a perspective on Rodrigues as a whole.

When deciding between a stay focused on Port Mathurin and a trip shaped more by nature or cultural experiences on Rodrigues, these are two distinct points of reference. The market, Tourism Office and cultural sites mentioned above are part of the townscape; the reserve, marine protected areas and views from Mont Limon are features of the wider destination.

For an overview of the wider trip: Port Mathurin.