The Lumina Tower

Like a lighthouse dominating the coast and guiding sailors to preserve them from stranding, the Lumina Tower has undeniably become a landmark for all foyalais. It was also a desire of Aimé Césaire of his time to have a building turned towards the sea, towards the future. His wish, finally, was granted in the most beautiful way. As early as 1994, Éric Orville began working on this project, and, with Franck Brière, they imagined a building that could blend in with the visual of this magnificent bay. They decided to erect a building made of glass with harmonious lines to symbolize 3 ideas: the sea, the air and femininity.

Proudly standing on its 18 floors on one of the most beautiful bays in the world offered by the bay of Fort-de-France, the Lumina Tower is part of a building complex of 3 buildings located at Pointe Simon on this magnificent waterfront. It also includes the Hotel le Simon with a hundred rooms overlooking the bay and a residence of 50 luxury apartments and commercial space. This real estate project really started in 2007 with the laying of the foundation stone and was financed by Guardian Holding, the largest insurance company in Trinidad & Tobago, the British and Dutch Antilles.

A competition had previously been initiated by the Pointe Simon development company to find a name for this future tower, the torch of a modern, forward-looking Martinique. In partnership with the Region and the Rectorate, the students therefore set out to find a name that could embody the history of Martinique and this new era. It was at the Joseph Zobel high school in Rivière Salée that the winner found the name that the Tower should be worthily named: LUMINA, in homage to LUMINA Sophie known as "Surprise", heroine and martyr, insurgent against segregation in Martinique.

To understand what the name LUMINA embodies, we must go back a little bit to the 19th century, to the time of a courageous but wounded Martinique.

LUIMINA Sophie was born on November 5, 1848 in La Broue in Vauclin. Martinique has just put an end to the slavery system on May 22nd, 1848 and it is on this house that Sophie LUMINA will grow up with her mother and her grandparents. However, on December 2nd, 1851, Napoleon III reinstated the rules that everyone must have a family record book specifying their identity, domicile, age, and movements. New rules of repression of public liberties were established and little by little the rural population felt more and more locked into a new emerging slavery, the privileged classes trying to preserve their advantages. In 1870, Léopold Lubin, refuses to allow the passage of the béké Augier de Maintenon. He is then struck with a whip. 2 months later, Léopold Augier takes revenge on Augier de Maintenon on the house of this last one and returns the same one to him. He is immediately arrested and condemned. From there, will be born the great insurrection of the South of Martinique. Sophie LUMINA is part of it. Code, a member of the jury in the conviction of Léopold Lubin, who publicly boasted that he had convicted him, is shot seven times. A state of emergency is then established in 15 communes of Martinique. The weeks that followed were extremely difficult and bloody. The army was called in, arrested nearly 500 rioters, and more than a dozen were shot. LUMINA Sophie, a 21-year-old seamstress, was one of the imprisoned rioters. She will be judged from March 17th to April 17th, 1871 and will be sentenced to hard labor for life because she is presented as the most terrible of the rioters, setting fire to houses and participating in the insurrection. She gave birth to a boy in prison who was taken from her and who died a few months later in captivity. She was deported on December 22nd, 1871 to the Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni prison and died there 8 years later, on December 15th, 1879, from mistreatment and illness. She was 31 years old.

Giving the name of LUMINA to this beautiful 18-story tower overlooking the bay of Fort-de-France is a strong link between the past and the future, between the symbol of resistance and the return of self-confidence.