Saint-Louis, Senegal

Saint-Louis, known in Wolof as Ndar, is the capital of Senegal's Saint-Louis Region, located in the northwest of the country near the mouth of the Senegal River. Its population reached 254,171 in 2023. The city was the capital of French colonial Senegal from 1673 to 1902 and of French West Africa from 1895 to 1902, and it also served as capital of neighboring Mauritania from 1920 to 1957. Once a major economic center of French West Africa, it remains a hub for tourism, sugar production, fishing and commerce, and it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, though a Senegalese government study warns that rising sea levels could put up to 80 percent of the city at flood risk by 2080.