Gorée
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How it came to be
Gorée, about 3.5 km off Dakar in Senegal, was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast from the 15th to the 19th century, according to UNESCO. Portugal, the Netherlands, England and France held it in turn. Grim slave quarters stand beside the elegant houses of the slave traders.
The House of Slaves was built around 1776 by Nicolas Pépin, brother of the signare Anne Pépin, and the family used it to hold enslaved Africans. It opened as a museum in 1962, and its curator Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye said more than a million people had passed through it. Historians disagree widely over how many people were shipped from the island.
The island was listed as a historic site by the colonial administration in 1944 and inscribed in 1978. About 200,000 people a year visit the museum, among them Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II.
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