Silhouette is one of the most impressive and least altered islands in the Seychelles. Every evening its rainforest-covered mountains, topped by peaks of more than 700 metres, stand out against the sky as seen from Mahé. They make one of the most photographed outlines in the country, which partly explains its name. Almost all of it is a national park, with one of the best-preserved primary rainforests in the Indian Ocean.
Unlike the classic tourist islands, Silhouette is practically uninhabited: only the small village of La Passe and the Hilton Labriz break its wild character. It's a paradise for rainforest hiking, diving in rich waters and close encounters with exceptional biodiversity. That includes extremely rare endemics such as the Silhouette frog and gecko, plus a giant tortoise sanctuary.
This practical guide explains how to get to Silhouette from Mahé (via Bel Ombre) and how to visit on a day trip or stay overnight. It also covers which hikes and activities not to miss and what to expect from the national park. It's a destination for people looking for untouched nature, tropical mountains and a real break, not party beaches: an almost intact Eden a short hop from the capital.
According to the most commonly cited account, Silhouette is named after Viscount Étienne de Silhouette, an 18th-century French finance minister. It was settled late and lived off coconut, vanilla, cinnamon and copra under the Dauban family, who left a manor house and a mausoleum that can still be seen in La Passe. Its rugged terrain and isolation kept development low, which preserved its primary rainforest. Today almost the whole island is a national park and a refuge for unique endemic species. You'll find the full story on our history page.
Read the full history ↓From the untouched Eden of Silhouette to the bird colonies of Bird Island and the far-flung Aldabra atoll, a World Heritage Site with more giant tortoises than the Galápagos.
Read the history of Remote islands and nature sanctuaries →They depart from Praslin, 58 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Silhouette is the third-largest island in the Seychelles and, geologically, one of the most spectacular: a true granite mountain rising out of the Indian Ocean and peaking at Mont Dauban, at around 740 metres. Like the rest of the Inner Islands, it is a fragment of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, continental crust hundreds of millions of years old that was left stranded in the ocean when India broke away from Africa and Madagascar.
Its rugged terrain and humid climate allowed a lush tropical rainforest to develop, and unlike that of almost every other island, it has remained largely intact. This primary forest, with endemic trees, giant ferns, carnivorous plants and unique wildlife, makes Silhouette one of the archipelago's greatest biodiversity treasures.
Before humans arrived, the island was an untouched paradise. Its difficult topography (steep mountains, little flat land) meant that it was settled late and only to a limited extent, which turned out to be a blessing for its nature: it never suffered the mass deforestation of the islands given over to coconut plantations, and that is why today it is a refuge for species that have died out elsewhere.
The name 'Silhouette' is usually attributed to Étienne de Silhouette, France's finance minister in the mid-18th century, at a time when the French were claiming and naming the islands of the archipelago. Curiously, the word 'silhouette' (for the cut-out shadow of a profile) also comes from this man's surname, which gives the island's name a fitting double meaning for a great mass that stands out against the sea at sunset.
Like so many islands in the Indian Ocean, Silhouette is linked to legends of the pirates and corsairs who sailed these waters in the 17th and 18th centuries. The French corsair Jean-François Hodoul, a historical figure in the Seychelles, is said to have had ties to the island, and there is no shortage of stories about hidden treasure, though they are more folklore than fact.
Permanent settlement came with the colonisation of the Seychelles from 1770 onwards. Silhouette became part of the archipelago's plantation economy, although its terrain limited farming. Over time, the island became tied above all to one family that would shape its history for generations: the Daubans.
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Silhouette was more or less the private domain of the Dauban family, who ran it as a plantation. On the most suitable land, they grew coconut palms for copra, along with vanilla, cinnamon, coffee and other tropical crops, worked by labourers who lived in the village of La Passe and other small settlements. The Daubans left a physical legacy that still survives.
From that era, the Creole-colonial plantation house (sometimes called Grann Kaz or Dauban House) still stands, and above all the striking Dauban family mausoleum in La Passe: a small classical-style temple with columns, set in the middle of the vegetation, which surprises visitors and shows how powerful and important this family was on the island.
Despite the farming, most of Silhouette (its mountains and inland forest) stayed largely untouched because the terrain was so steep. That combination of limited plantations in the lowlands and intact primary forest on the heights is what paved the way for the island's future in conservation.
With the independence of the Seychelles in 1976 and growing environmental awareness, Silhouette's exceptional natural value became clear. The island is home to one of the best-preserved primary forests in the Indian Ocean and a very high concentration of endemic species: tiny frogs of the Sooglossidae family (among the smallest amphibians in the world), geckos, snails, birds and plants that barely exist anywhere else. Silhouette is, quite literally, a biodiversity ark.
To protect this heritage, most of the island was declared Silhouette National Park, and organisations such as the Island Conservation Society have run programmes for research, habitat restoration, control of invasive species and giant tortoise conservation, with a sanctuary in La Passe. The island thus combines strict protection with active scientific research.
Tourism has been kept very limited and carefully managed: the only large development is the Hilton Labriz resort, next to La Passe, and access is controlled. In this way, Silhouette represents a different model of tourism in the Seychelles: not crowded beaches, but untouched nature, rainforest hiking and close contact with unique biodiversity, on one of the wildest and most beautiful islands in the country.
