The slave trade's most haunting memorial — Cape Coast Castle, white-water canopy walks in Kakum Forest, and Ghana's finest fresh fish market
Cape Coast is a coastal city in Ghana's Central Region — the former capital of British Gold Coast, built around the Cape Coast Castle (the largest and best-preserved slave fort in West Africa) and a UNESCO World Heritage site within walking distance of the city centre. The castle was the primary transshipment point for enslaved West Africans bound for the Americas from the 1660s until the British abolition of the trade in 1807 — an estimated 1.5 million people passed through the 'door of no return' at Cape Coast and nearby Elmina over 200 years. The guided tour of the dungeons (where up to 1,…
Cape Coast was established by the Fetu people (a Fante group) and became a Swedish, then Danish, then Dutch, then British trading post from the 1640s onward. Cape Coast Castle, the largest of the 37 castles and forts along the Gold Coast, was the headquarters of the British Royal African Company from 1672 — the company that held the monopoly on the British slave trade until 1698. The castle's Governor of Cape Coast controlled the flow of enslaved people, gold, ivory, and later cocoa through the Gold Coast. After abolition in 1807, the castle became a military garrison and the city became the…