The Cotton Tree city — where freed slaves built a nation
Freetown is one of West Africa's most historically charged cities, founded in 1792 by freed slaves repatriated from Nova Scotia, taking its name from the freedom they found here. The city's 500-year-old Cotton Tree stands at the centre as a spiritual symbol, and the surrounding hills drop steeply into one of the most beautiful natural harbours in Africa, fringed with white-sand beaches that remain largely undiscovered.
Freetown was established in 1787 as a settlement for freed Black loyalists and liberated Africans, making it one of the oldest planned freedom colonies in Africa. The British Crown Colony founded here in 1808 became the base for the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron suppressing the slave trade, and over 50,000 liberated Africans were resettled here across the 19th century — a legacy that makes Sierra Leone's Krio culture unlike anywhere else in the world.