Guadeloupe's largest municipality, Pointe-à-Pitre, is a mix of old and new: largely commercial in appearance, it's peppered with colonial architecture and West Indian flavor. The city began as a fish market at the edge of the harbor in 1654, and there's still a lively, colorful open-air publicmarket running along La Darse, the inner harbor. Women wearing madras cloth turbans sell island fruit, vegetables, flowers, pungent spices, handicrafts and clothing while boats along the dock sell fresh fish. The hub of town is the Place de la Victoire, an open space punctuated with tall royal palms and sidewalk cafés. The city has a couple of good museums, including the Musée Schoelcher, dedicated to abolitionist Victor Schoelcher and featuring artifacts relating to slavery, and the Musée Saint-John Perse, which occupies an attractive 19th-century Creole home with ornate wrought-iron balconies. The museum is dedicated to the renowned poet and Nobel laureate Alexis Léger (1887-1975), better known as Saint-John Perse.