Visit Dreyfus Tower, Kourou, French Guiana

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Beautiful view of a historic telegraph tower and the water. Named after Alfred Dreyfus. What is now known as the Dreyfus Tower was originally built to communicate with the Salvation Islands using semaphore flags before the advent of radio. The rocky point (Pointe des Roches) where the Kourou River meets the Atlantic Ocean was once the site of the Kourou Prison, one of the three mainland prisons in French Guiana along with those in Saint-Laurent-du-Moroni and Cayenne. Alfred Dreyfus (9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus' complete exoneration. He was sent overseas and imprisoned in harsh conditions on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.

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