Overview:
At Citadelle Laferrière in northern Haiti, a significant rehabilitation and paraseismic reinforcement undertaking is underway to protect the UNESCO World Heritage website amid rising local weather and seismic dangers. Led by the Institute for the Safeguarding of Nationwide Heritage, the work protects one in all Haiti’s strongest historic symbols and sustains native livelihoods. By means of the voices of building staff, engineers and residents—who spoke with The Haitian Occasions—the undertaking displays a broader battle to safeguard Haiti’s cultural heritage amid insecurity, neglect and financial hardship.
Editor’s word: This is the second of two installments concerning the rehabilitation and preservation work on the Citadelle Laferrière, the UNESCO World Heritage website in Milot, northern Haiti. See half 1 in pictures right here.
MILOT, Haiti — Excessive above the plains of northern Haiti, Citadelle Laferrière has stood for greater than two centuries as an emblem of freedom, resistance and Black sovereignty. Constructed after independence to guard the world’s first Black republic from international invasion, the large stone fortress stays Haiti’s strongest historic monument.
In the present day, additionally it is a building website.
Since September 2025, engineers and staff have been finishing up rehabilitation and paraseismic reinforcement work on the Citadelle as a part of a long-term effort by the Institute for the Safeguarding of Nationwide Heritage (ISPAN)—a authorities company below the Ministry of Tradition’s oversight—to guard the UNESCO World Heritage website from earthquakes, erosion and structural decay. The work consists of sealing cracks, reinstalling a balcony and constructing small skyway bridges that can enable guests to stroll from room to room and extra.
For Bernadin Blaise, a building employee from close by Milot, the work is deeply private.
“With out the Citadelle, I wouldn’t be alive,” Blaise stated, seated in entrance of the fortress as he spoke with a good friend. Wearing pink work garments, he gestured towards the stone partitions behind him—partitions which have offered him regular work for greater than 25 years.
Blaise remembers when the Citadelle was in far worse situation.
“After I was a toddler, the monument was actually deteriorating,” he stated. “However when ISPAN began working right here significantly, all the pieces modified. The Citadelle gave me work. It fed my household.”
Preserving a nationwide image
Citadelle Laferrière, constructed within the early nineteenth century below King Henri Christophe, is each a nationwide monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Website. However like a lot of Haiti’s cultural patrimony, it has suffered from many years of underinvestment, political instability and pure disasters—together with the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Engineer Jean Hérold Pérard, who’s overseeing the present section of labor, stated the main target is on strengthening the construction with out altering its historic integrity.
“We’re doing paraseismic reinforcement to cut back vulnerability in case of earthquakes,” Pérard defined. “On the identical time, we’re rehabilitating broken sections whereas respecting the unique structure.”
After sealing cracks, staff will inject cement into the partitions to strengthen picket helps and stabilize stone components—all painstaking duties carried out below troublesome logistical situations in a rustic dealing with a number of crises.
Heritage amid nationwide disaster
The rehabilitation continues at a time when Haiti is grappling with widespread gang violence, financial collapse and a humanitarian emergency that impacts hundreds of thousands of individuals. The nation has recorded greater than 1.4 million displaced individuals nationwide as of Fall 2025. Whereas the inhabitants struggles with insecurity and street blockages, the Citadelle Laferrière stays accessible—an exception in a nation the place journey on nationwide highways has turn into more and more harmful.
For residents of Milot, the undertaking represents greater than preservation; it is likely one of the few remaining sources of financial exercise.
“Folks right here stay due to the Citadelle,” stated Ramsès Étienne, a lifelong Milot resident. “We don’t need the Citadelle to perish. If it falls, the city falls with it.”
Tourism linked to the Citadelle as soon as sustained tons of of households in northern Haiti. Though customer numbers have dropped sharply in recent times, locals hope that safeguarding the monument now will enable tourism to return when safety situations enhance.
Labor, dignity and continuity
On the grounds of the fortress, staff hammer nails into picket beams, restore helps and carry supplies throughout uneven stone surfaces—labor that connects immediately’s Haitians with those that first constructed the Citadelle greater than 200 years in the past.
For Blaise and others, working on the Citadelle is each a job and a type of stewardship.
“This monument belongs to all Haitians,” he stated. “If we don’t shield it, we lose a part of ourselves.”
As Haiti struggles to carry collectively its establishments, heritage websites like Citadelle Laferrière stand as reminders of what the nation has already survived—and what it nonetheless has price defending. The rehabilitation work underway in Milot will not be solely reinforcing stone partitions, but in addition sustaining reminiscence, id and hope in a nation trying to find stability. Pérard stated the rehabilitation and paraseismic undertaking is scheduled to finish in March.
The next are movies of website staff and residents who spoke with The Haitian Occasions on Dec. 22, 2025: