The name of the city comes from “home of Egino or Egeno,” the Count of Eguisheim. The first official mention of the city dates back to 720 in an act of donation. Archeological research reveals that tens of thousands of years ago homo-sapiens from the Dordogne region occupied Eguisheim.

At the center of this charming city, which was fortified in 1257, one finds the remains of the fortified castle that was constructed in the 13th century by the Count Eberhard who was the son of Adalbert, the Duke of Alsace, and the nephew of Saint Odile. In 1049 Bruno of Eguisheim was born here; he would become Pope under the name of Léon IX and was partly responsible for the reform of the Church in the Middle Ages. He was later canonized.
From a totally different point of view, Eguisheim is considered to be the cradle of Alsatian wine-making in the 4th century.

Area: 436 sq mi (1,128 sq km). Population: (2010 est.) 402,000. Capital: Fort-de-France. It is 50 mi (80 km) long and 22 mi (35 km) wide and is largely mountainous; its highest point, Mount Pelée, is an active volcano. Tourism is the basis of its economy. Carib Indians, who had ousted earlier Arawak inhabitants, resided on the island when Christopher Columbus visited it in 1502. In 1635 a Frenchman established a colony there, and in 1674 it passed to the French crown. The British captured and held the island from 1762 to 1763 and occupied it again during the Napoleonic Wars, but each time it was returned to France. Made a department of France in 1946, it remained under French administration despite a communist-led independence movement in the 1970s. In the last decades of the 20th century, Martinique and other French overseas possessions achieved greater autonomy but stopped short of independence.