Gorée Island

Gorée Island, a short ferry ride from Dakar, is one of the most beautiful and deeply moving places in Senegal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its car-free lanes of pastel colonial houses draped in bougainvillea are lovely, but its significance is sombre: for centuries Gorée was a centre of the Atlantic slave trade, and its Maison des Esclaves, the House of Slaves, with its haunting Door of No Return, stands as a powerful memorial to the millions of Africans torn from the continent. It is a place of pilgrimage, reflection and remembrance.

History

With almost no drinking water, the island had no settlement before Europeans came, though people from the mainland used it. Portuguese traders set up on it in 1444 and built a chapel of dry stone and straw that Vasco da Gama visited in 1502. By 1628 the Dutch West India Company had a fort here and called the island Goeree, perhaps from goede reede, "good roadstead"; it became a warehouse and transshipment point for the coast, and many enslaved people were shipped from it to Curaçao in the 1660s and 1670s. A French fleet under Jean d'Estrées took it in 1677, and apart from spells of British occupation it stayed French until 1960. After the slave trade from Senegal declined in the 1770s and 1780s, Gorée shipped peanuts, gum arabic and ivory, and the so-called Maison des Esclaves, built in 1786, probably belongs to this later trade; the island was home to a Métis merchant community in which women known as signares owned ships and property. It became a French commune in 1872, was the birthplace of Blaise Diagne, the first African deputy in the French National Assembly, and in 1978 was among the first twelve places named World Heritage Sites (Wikipedia, Gorée).

Highlights

• The House of Slaves - the memorial and its Door of No Return.
• The colonial lanes - the pastel houses and bougainvillea.
• The historical museum - the exhibits on the island's past.
• The island views - the quiet, car-free streets and sea.

When to go

November to May, the cooler, drier season, for the most comfortable visit; the island is a short, frequent ferry ride from Dakar and is best given time and quiet reflection rather than rushed. Approach the House of Slaves with the respect and emotional readiness such a place deserves.

Practical notes

Historians debate the precise scale of the trade that passed through Gorée specifically, but its role and its power as a symbol and memorial of the immense human tragedy of slavery are beyond question, and a visit is deeply affecting. The island can be busy and vendors persistent. As a beautiful, poignant place of memory and reflection, though, it is one of the most significant and moving sites in West Africa.

Nearby

The capital Dakar and its monuments and markets are just across the water.

Key facts