For many people, Praslin is the most dazzling island in the Seychelles. It's the second largest, quieter and more rural than Mahé, and blessed with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Anse Lazio and Anse Georgette have white sand, turquoise water and huge pink granite boulders. Inland it hides a unique treasure: the Vallée de Mai, a prehistoric palm forest listed as a World Heritage Site, where the legendary coco de mer grows and the rare Seychelles black parrot lives.
At just 10 km long, Praslin is easy to get around and a perfect base for exploring the small archipelago around it. Giant tortoises roam freely on Curieuse Island, Cousin and Aride are seabird sanctuaries, and neighbouring La Digue is only 15 minutes away by ferry. With its unhurried pace, fishing villages and postcard bays, Praslin is the heart of the 'other Seychelles', more natural and less urban than the capital.
This guide takes a practical look at Praslin. It covers which beaches not to miss, how to visit the Vallée de Mai and see the coco de mer, which trips to take to the neighbouring islands, how to get around and how to combine Praslin with La Digue. Whether it's your main destination or your base for island hopping, Praslin sums up the best of the Seychelles: dream beaches, unique nature and the calm of a tropical island.
Arab sailors knew Praslin first, and later the Europeans called it 'Île des Palmes' ('island of palms') for its coco de mer forests, whose huge and curious seed fuelled centuries of legends. In the 18th century it was a refuge for pirates and privateers, and Baie Sainte Anne is linked to tales of hidden treasure. France renamed it Praslin in 1768 in honour of a minister. Like the rest of the Seychelles, it passed to British hands in 1814 and became independent in 1976. Our history page tells the full story of the island and the coco de mer.
Read the full history ↓The country's second island and its cluster of reserves: here, in the Vallée de Mai, grows the coco de mer, and on the neighbouring islands pioneering conservation in the Indian Ocean was born.
Read the history of Praslin and the nearby islands →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it had a European name, Praslin was known for a mystery that fascinated the world for centuries: the coco de mer. This huge double-lobed seed, the largest in the plant kingdom, would turn up floating on the beaches of the Maldives, India and the shores of the Indian Ocean, carried there by the currents. Since nobody knew where it came from (the palm that produces it grows only on Praslin and neighbouring Curieuse), people believed it came from an underwater tree, hence the name 'coco de mer', coconut of the sea.
Its rarity and curious shape turned it into a legendary and extremely expensive object. Kings and sultans paid fortunes for it; it was credited with magical, aphrodisiac and medicinal powers, and the seeds were mounted in gold and silver like treasures. Arab sailors, who had known the islands since ancient times, and later the Europeans, searched for the source of this marvel. Only in the 18th century, when the French explored Praslin, was it discovered that the coco de mer grew in the palm forests of this island, which was therefore named 'Île des Palmes', the Island of Palms.
That prehistoric palm forest, which produced the most coveted seed in the world, is today the Vallée de Mai, a World Heritage Site. Its discovery solved one of the great botanical puzzles in history and tied Praslin's destiny forever to this unique plant, a symbol of Seychelles. The island that had kept the secret of the coco de mer was about to step fully into the history of European colonisation of the Indian Ocean.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the uninhabited islands of Seychelles, Praslin among them, were an ideal hideout for the pirates and corsairs who swarmed the Indian Ocean. They lay on the routes of the rich ships sailing to and from India and the East loaded with gold, spices and silks, and with no authority to control them they offered hiding places, fresh water, turtles to eat and sheltered coves where ships could be careened and the loot shared out.
The bay of Baie Sainte Anne, on Praslin, and other inlets around the islands feature in the legends of pirate treasure still told in Seychelles. It is said that corsairs such as the famous Olivier Levasseur, 'La Buse', or the English pirate John Taylor sailed these waters, and that somewhere on the islands they hid fabulous riches that were never found. These stories, a mix of fact and fantasy, are part of the archipelago's folklore and fired the imagination of treasure hunters for generations.
The age of the pirates ended when the European powers imposed order on the Indian Ocean and colonised the islands. But it left its mark on place names, on popular tales and on the air of mystery that surrounds places like Praslin. That past of corsairs, together with the enigma of the coco de mer, makes the island's early history an adventure story, worthy of the treasure novels that inspired writers like Robert Louis Stevenson.
Real colonisation of Praslin came with France in the 18th century. In 1768, a French expedition led by Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne explored the island and formally took possession of it, renaming it 'Praslin' in honour of César Gabriel de Choiseul, Duke of Praslin, Minister of the Navy under King Louis XV. It was during this expedition that the origin of the coco de mer in the island's forests was confirmed. Soon afterwards, French settlers from Mahé and Mauritius began to settle on Praslin.
As in the rest of Seychelles, the colonial economy was based on plantations (coconut, spices, cotton) worked by enslaved people brought from Africa and Madagascar. Praslin's population, a mix of French settlers and enslaved Africans, gave rise to the Creole society that still defines the island today. The highly valuable coco de mer began to be exploited intensively, and the palm forests suffered from logging and fires, which in the long run made their protection necessary.
In 1814, after the Napoleonic Wars, Seychelles, and Praslin with it, passed from France to Great Britain under the Treaty of Paris, although the culture, language and surnames remained mostly French. The abolition of slavery in 1835 transformed the island's society. Under British rule, Praslin carried on its rural, fishing way of life, with the coco de mer and copra as its resources, still untouched by the tourism that centuries later would turn it into a dream destination.
As the exploitation of the coco de mer and Praslin's forests grew, so did the awareness that this ecosystem was irreplaceable. The Vallée de Mai, the heart of the palm forest, had stayed relatively intact, almost a living fossil of the prehistoric vegetation of the granite islands. Its scientific and natural value was extraordinary: not just for the coco de mer, but for the other endemic palms, the wildlife and, above all, the Seychelles black parrot, a bird that lives only on Praslin.
In the 20th century steps were taken to protect this treasure. The Vallée de Mai was placed under protection and, in 1966, declared a reserve. The highest recognition came in 1983, when UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site, one of only two sites in Seychelles with that status (the other is the remote Aldabra atoll). Its management was entrusted to the Seychelles Islands Foundation, which looks after its conservation and study.
Protecting the Vallée de Mai was part of a wider awakening that made Seychelles a world reference in conservation. The country understood early on that its unique nature (the endemic forests, the birds saved from extinction on islands like Cousin, the giant tortoises) was its greatest heritage and its main attraction. Praslin, with the Vallée de Mai and the reserves on its neighbouring islands, sits at the centre of this conservation story that makes the archipelago such an exceptional place.
Today Praslin is one of the great destinations in Seychelles, the island that combines some of the most beautiful beaches in the world (Anse Lazio, Anse Georgette) with a unique natural heritage, the Vallée de Mai and its coco de mer. After the country's independence in 1976 and the take-off of tourism, the island developed hotels and resorts, but kept its quiet, rural pace, very different from that of Mahé, home to the capital. It is the favourite base for island hopping around the small north-eastern archipelago.
From Praslin you can easily reach a string of outstanding nature reserves: Curieuse, with its giant tortoises; Cousin and Aride, seabird sanctuaries and pioneers of conservation; the islet of St Pierre, for snorkelling; and neighbouring La Digue, 15 minutes away by ferry. That concentration of beauty and protected nature makes Praslin and its surroundings one of the most precious corners of the Indian Ocean.
Praslin thus captures the essence of today's Seychelles: a balance, not always an easy one, between the high-end tourism that sustains the economy and the conservation of a fragile, unique natural world. Its pink granite beaches, its prehistoric palm forest and its islands of tortoises and birds sum up why the archipelago is admired around the world. The old Island of Palms, which once kept the secret of the coco de mer, is still a paradise where nature rules.
