A series of parks split by wide boulevards that collectively make up the Place des Héros de l'Indépendence, with the former site of the demolished Palais National at its center, this broken heart of Port-au-Prince suffered greatly in the 2010 earthquake and, while better than it was, it's not somewhere you want to hang around.
Several statues of Haiti's founding fathers dot Champs de Mars: Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (on horseback), Alexander Pétion and Henry Christophe. The Marron Inconnu, the iconic statue of the unknown slave blowing a conch-shell trumpet, is also found here. It's odd to wander among the city's former main attraction, imagining it as a tent camp for thousands after the earthquake, and beholding it in its new state as a ghost town.
