Elmina
The most colourful place in Ghana.
Elmina is easy to love. It’s a place to hang out for a couple of days and watch life happen around you. From a historical perspective, its key attraction is Elmina Castle (elminacastle.info) which, like its Cape Coast equivalent, has strong links with the slave years and is registered as a World Heritage Site. It was founded in 1482, making it the oldest extant European building in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s had a few facelifts over the years and little resembles the original structure, but still makes for a fascinating (if disquieting) place to tour. For around GH¢10, plus a little extra if you’re taking photos, visitors can explore the dungeons and stairways of the interior. Unlike Cape Coast Castle, guides here will also ask for a tip of around GH¢20-60.
The other skyline-dominating building you’ll notice is the seventeenth-century fort on St Jago Hill. It was from this hilltop that the Dutch successfully bombarded the Portuguese-occupied castle – they built the fort to ensure no one would be able to dislodge them in the same way. Elsewhere in town, the remarkable Elmina-Java Museum is well worth investigating. It focuses on the more than 3,000 Ghanaians recruited by the Dutch in the 19th century to fight for the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army.
As elsewhere in the Fante region, Elmina is also noted for its posuban shrines – each of them dedicated to a quasi-military ‘company’ formed by bands of young men – which generally take the form of concrete oddities surrounded by painted life-size figures.
Ghana Ecotours (024 217 6357, ghanaecotours.com) offers guided walks around Elmina that last about one and a half hours and take in the fort and the fish market.
