Historic Center of Agadez
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. How many people have stood at a site or want to go will be shown once enough people use the app.
Seals, your want-to-go list and the year you stood here are kept in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
Agadez, on the southern edge of the Sahara, is known as the gateway to the desert. It was founded before the 14th century and became a sultanate in 1449. In the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Sultanate of Aïr established, Tuareg groups settled in the city, and its quarters followed the boundaries of their old encampments. That street pattern is still in place.
A crossroads of the caravan trade, the city is divided into 11 irregular quarters of earthen houses, palaces and religious buildings. The Grand Mosque dates back to 1515 and was rebuilt in the same style in 1844. Its minaret, 27 metres high and made entirely of mud brick, is the tallest such structure in the world. From 1515 to 1591 the city belonged to the Songhai Empire.
France ruled Agadez from 1906, and after defeating the revolt of Kaocen in 1916 governed through a restored sultan. Today the city is also a hub for transporting uranium mined in the region. The historic centre was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2013.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).