Island of Gorée

The Island of Gorée lies just off the coast of Dakar and stands as one of the most powerful memorials to the Atlantic slave trade. From the 15th to the 19th century it was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast, ruled in turn by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, and its restrained colonial architecture — pastel houses with shaded courtyards set against the fortified Maison des Esclaves — embodies the wrenching contrast between the comfort of the traders and the misery of the enslaved. Today the small, car-free island is a place of pilgrimage and reflection, its lanes lined with galleries, museums and monuments to memory and reconciliation. Inscribed by UNESCO in 1978 among its very first World Heritage Sites, Gorée endures as a symbol of human exploitation and, equally, of the will to remember and to reconcile.