Wassu Stone Circles

The stone circles scattered along the Gambia River's middle reaches belong to one of archaeology's quiet astonishments: across Senegambia stand well over a thousand megalithic circles - the densest concentration of such monuments anywhere - and Wassu is their most celebrated site, eleven circles of rust-red laterite pillars up to two and a half metres tall, quarried, dressed and raised over burials roughly between the third century BC and the sixteenth century AD. UNESCO inscribed Wassu with three sister sites in 2006. Visitors still balance small stones atop the pillars for luck, a living gesture on monuments whose builders' names are lost.

What you actually see

• The eleven circles - the laterite pillars in their river-plain setting.
• The site museum - burials, quarrying and the wider megalith story.
• The wishing stones - pebbles balanced on the pillars by visitors and locals.
• The river country - the middle-river landscape of the builders.

When to go

November to April for the dry season that most river trips use; mornings soften the laterite's glare. Wassu pairs naturally with Janjanbureh and the River Gambia National Park's river channels.

Honest expectations

The circles are evocative, not monumental in the pyramid sense - pillars of shoulder height in a quiet field, carrying a thousand years lightly; the museum supplies the meaning. Getting here is most of the effort: river excursions or long rough-road drives. Midday heat on the shadeless site is real.

Nearby

Janjanbureh's river island, the chimpanzee islands of the national park and Kuntaur's wharf.