Port-au-Prince Iron Market

About the Iron Market

Port-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of Haiti, home to the iconic Iron Market (Marché en Fer) - a striking 19th-century iron structure with distinctive red pavilion roofs. Originally prefabricated in France and shipped to Haiti, this beloved market has been the heart of Haitian commerce and culture for over a century, selling everything from local crafts to fresh produce beneath its ornate iron framework.

Erected in 1891 during the presidency of Florvil Hyppolite, whose name the building still carries (Marché Hyppolite), the Iron Market's prefabricated metal halls, red minaret-like towers and clock became a fixed landmark of downtown Port-au-Prince and the center of its commerce in produce, crafts and vodou goods. A widely repeated story holds that the structure was first built in Europe for a railway station in Cairo before being redirected to Haiti; this account is legendary and has not been reliably documented. Fire gutted the market in 2008, and the January 12, 2010 earthquake wrecked what remained. A reconstruction financed by the telecommunications company Digicel reopened it on January 12, 2011, making its survival a marker of the city's recovery.