West Africa's largest city by area — àmàlà stew, Cocoa House, and living Yoruba tradition
Ibadan is one of the largest cities in Africa by population and the largest by area — a vast Yoruba city of red-roofed compounds climbing seven hills above the Ogun River. It was the seat of Yoruba military power in the 19th century, then the most important city in British Nigeria before Lagos took over. The food culture is pure Yoruba: àmàlà (yam flour dumplings) with ewedu soup and abula, bọ̀lì (roasted plantain) with groundnut, and ọfada rice with designer stew at roadside mama puts. Ibadan has almost no tourist infrastructure, which means the restaurants, markets, and chichewa-speaking st…
Ibadan was founded in the 1820s as a military camp by Yoruba warriors from the Egba, Ife, Oyo, and Ijebu polities — it became the dominant military power in Yorubaland after the collapse of the Old Oyo Empire and controlled much of southwestern Nigeria. British colonists made it the capital of the Western Region, and the University of Ibadan (1948) was Nigeria's first university. The Cocoa House (1965), still the most recognizable building on the Ibadan skyline, was built entirely from cocoa export revenues.