Habitation Clement
More than a distillery…..the visit of the Clement Plantation is divided in 5 themes: Rum: the century old rum distillery Clement, offers it’s visitors the possibility to discover the technics and the rum making process. Natural product made from pure sugar cane juice; the agricultural rum produced on this plantation since 1917 is a history of tradition. With 5 cellars, the visitor observes the heart of the business in activity. All the steps take place at the plantation except the distillation. Today the 5 cellars at Clement Plantation houses more than two million liters of rum. Mixing modern means, hard work and knowledge, the quality of the Clement brand crosses the ages. Botanical garden: presenting a rare collection of more than 300 tropical plants, the visit of the Clement plantation begins with the visit of a beautiful botanical park of 16 hectars with a label ‘remarkable garden’ in 2015 by the minister of culture. Like a hyphen between the patrimonial wealth of the site and the modern time, the sculpture garden forms an open-air museum exposing permanently the artwork acquired by the Clement Foundation. Emotion and surprise guaranteed in front of the contemporary art rooted in the vegetal décor of the new park. Witness of the industrial past of the plantation, a machine garden was also put in the landscape scheme to show the ancient tools of production: sugar pots, rolls, gearings, vapor machines, and right next to them the shunter which reminds us of the time when supply for the factory was by railway. In the ancient garden which borders the main house, many traditional trees offer a natural case to the house: flamboyant trees, tamarind trees, breadfruit trees, acajou, mango trees, hog plum and cursed fig trees Creole theme: real witness of the past of the Clement Plantation, the main house built on the ‘Domaine d’Acajou’ in the community of François, has been the residence of the Clement family from 1887 to 1986. Protected with its dependencies of the title of historical monument in 1991, then totally restored in 2003, this traditional architectural body forms a unique occasion to emerge in the creole living. With its honeybee silhouette, the main house occupies symbolically the highest point of the domain. Surrounded by mature trees, the house presents a side with wooden tiles called 'essentes' combined with a roof in fine scaled tiles. The ground floor- progressively widened with one floor and lateral galleries- has a ventilation system typical of tropical regions. Inside of a preserved interior, the furniture and objects form a rich and eclectic collection which shows the intimate side of the Clement family. In front of the house a wide yard gives access to the domestic buildings, the stable, kitchen, and ‘Bush-Mitterand’ house in memory of the American French summit of 1991 and finally ‘case a Leo’ which was the old carriage shed. Industrial theme: built in 1917, the old Homère Clément distillery stopped its activity in 1988 because of its old age and incapacity to answer to modern security norms. Restored in 2005, and transformed into a center of rum interpretation, it puts into light, on different levels connected by gateways, the whole of the industrial patrimony of the plantation. After the harvest of the sugar cane, the stems are chopped and cleaned; then comes the crushing, powered by a vapor machine. Put to ferment in big tanks, the juice collected than passes through the distillation column. The exposed model illustrates the fundamental characteristic linked to the identity of the martinican rum: the distillation in a column. A compulsory process to benefit the label of origin (A.O.C). The Clément foundation: implanted in the heart of the plantation the foundation of the business enterprise GBH, the Clément foundation, since 2005 takes philanthropic action in favor of art and cultural patrimony in Martinique. Lodged on the clement plantation, site that it assures the development and enhancement, the clement foundation also assures the promotion of contemporary art in the Caribbean. More than 170 artists have already exposed their work in this patrimonial place which welcomes now a center of contemporary art.
Admission Included