Ruins of Loropéni

The Ruins of Loropéni are a set of stone walls in southern Burkina Faso, near the borders with Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo. The 11,130-square-metre property is the best preserved of ten fortresses in the Lobi area and belongs to a larger group of about 100 stone enclosures. Its walls, up to 6 metres high, now stand among shrubs and dense trees.

According to UNESCO, the ruins have recently been shown to be at least 1,000 years old. The settlement was occupied by the Lohron or Koulango peoples, who controlled the extraction and working of gold in the region at its height from the 14th to the 17th century. The site reflects the power of the trans-Saharan gold trade, and large parts of it have yet to be excavated.

The settlement seems to have been abandoned during some periods of its long history and was finally deserted in the early 19th century. A tradition of the local Gan or Kaan people holds that their king Tokpa Farma built it as a new capital, but the revised dating indicates that the Kaan occupied and left the walls rather than building them. In 2009 it became the first World Heritage site in Burkina Faso.