Diégo Suarez Antsiranana
Located in the second more beautiful bay of the world, extraordinary splits offering 156 Kms of coast, Diégo-Suarez, the largest city of the North of Madagascar and his area, offers a multitude of aspects to be discovered. Idyllic maritime sites, with its many bays and its villages of traditional fishermen, rich underwater fauna and flora and deserted beaches, as well in the East in the Indian Ocean as in the West in the channel of Mozambique.
As for the roadstead, it delimits in fact four bays. The pass which makes it possible to penetrate there measures only one small kilometer. The similarity with Rio de Janeiro goes until having a sugar loaf, granite cone which is drawn up in the sea. Diégo Suarez is also an important volcanic mass (Mountain of Ambre) covered with tropical forests which profit from a fresh and wet climate, lakes of craters and an endemic fauna.
Farther in the South, the Solid mass of Ankarana presents a characteristic relief with its famous legendary “Tsingy” sharp-edged and its caves.
The general architecture of the city points out the colonial presence of France and particularly of its marine which occupied the city during more than one half-century.
Arsenal, port, Hôtel of the Navy are there to testify to this close past. Rectilinear and parallel arterial roads edged with majestic stone masonries with floors and colonnades, decorated public gardens and splendid points of view on the immense bay, the city has a particular atmosphere which is not met in any other place in Madagascar.
One of the reasons is the mixture of the various ethnos groups. The population of Diego-Suarez is metis as well as African. The city is also very Arab with its 14 Mosques and its residences with balusters. Reflection of its insulation, the city differs from all the other cities of the country by its cosmopolitan population.
