Grand-Bassam

Grand Bassam is a beach town about 45 minutes away from Abidjan. Its UNESCO status comes from the fact that it was a French colonial capital for a few years in the late 1800s. The capital was moved inland soon after it was established due to an outbreak of yellow fever, leaving behind a cluster of French colonial buildings that still remain today. Most of the site is on a barrier island/isthmus, which is walkable via a bridge from the modern town. The part on the isthmus is still sparsely inhabited, but has the eerie feeling of a ghost town due to the number of abandoned buildings. There was significant flooding in Grand Bassam in October 2019. When I visited in mid-November, the water levels were still high on the inland side, but water had cleared from the streets and there were few signs of damage.

As is a theme with some of the sites in Africa, I wish there was better upkeep and more information online. Although a few key buildings (like the costume museum in the former governor's palace) have been preserved, many of the buildings were deteriorating and some were abandoned. The upside is that there certainly were not a lot of tourists, and there seemed to be no tourist infrastructure when we went. But it was safe and easy to walk around. We wandered around for a few hours, gave a boy a tip to show us around one of the abandoned buildings, found one …