Despite its dilapidation, earthquake damage, and high crime rate (especially petty crime like pickpocketing), I´m told the capital (pop. 1.2 million) is doable and even reasonably safe if you take common-sense precautions. Highlights include the Iron Market, one of those colorful Caribbean covered marketplace with all sorts of stalls produce, spices, and handicrafts, and the Champ de Mars, a big public park which besides its trees and other greenery is notable for its statues of Haitian historical figures as well as performers and street food and handicraft vendors. There´s a big open space where the once grandiose neoclassical National Palace, home to the country´s president, once stood before it was so damaged in the 2010 earthquake that it had to be torn down (plans are afoot to build a faithful though modernized recreation in the coming years). And fronting the park is perhaps Port-au-Prince´s single most compelling attraction: the Musée Du Panthéon National Haïtien (pictured here), a museum - built partly underground, by the way, which saved it from the 2010 quake - with an impressive collection of Haitian art and artifacts dating back to the pre-settlement Taíno people and ranging up to recent history, with a good bit devoted to the slave revolution, and the country's struggle to become the first European colony to gain independence, in 1804.
Read more in my post 11 Excellent Experiences in Haiti.
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