Photo : Joachim Huber — CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
Zou· Kingdoms· UNESCO
The most feared kingdom in West Africa, and the Amazons' treasures at last returned.
Ideal stay
1 to 2 days
Theme
Royal history & Amazons
Ideal for
Prestige, culture
The city
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, Abomey was the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful and best-organised states of pre-colonial West Africa. Twelve kings succeeded one another, each building his palace of earth. At the heart of the town, the Royal Palaces of Abomey, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, keep their adobe walls adorned with polychrome bas-reliefs that recount the victories and emblems of each sovereign.
Abomey is living a renaissance. The new museum devoted to the Amazons and Kings of Danxomè, set within the listed site, displays under international-standard conditions the twenty-six royal treasures restituted by France: the thrones of kings Ghezo and Glèlè, the anthropomorphic statues, the récades, those sceptres of power. Within the palaces themselves, the guilds of court artisans still make the appliqué hangings, the wood carvings and the lost-wax bronze. This is where you grasp the real role of the Amazons, the Agojie, and the mechanics of a fully sovereign African power.
What you'll experience
Royal history · Prestige
The Royal Palaces, walls that speak
You follow the adobe walls listed by UNESCO, where each bas-relief tells a victory, a king, an emblem. Your host deciphers these silent narratives: you no longer see motifs, you read three centuries of organised, sovereign African power.
A UNESCO site that stays opaque without expert reading. Here it all makes sense.
Restitution · Emotion
Before the thrones returned from France
In the new museum, you stand before the twenty-six restituted royal treasures: the thrones of Ghezo and Glèlè, the récades of power. These objects left African soil by force to return to it. To stand before them is to witness, in person, a repair of history.
The treasures of restitution, the pride of an entire continent.
Amazons · Truth restored
The true story of the Agojie
Far from the Hollywood myth, your host restores what the Amazons of Dahomey truly were: an elite female military corps, disciplined and feared across the region. You leave with a true story, and the means to correct the one you were told.
The exact account, the one cinema romanticised and distorted.
UNESCO World Heritage
Royal Palaces of Abomey
Restituted royal treasures
Museum of the Amazons and Kings
Polychrome adobe
Royal bas-reliefs
Hangings, lost-wax bronze
Court artisan workshops
Statue of King Béhanzin
Goho Square
This stop is part of our circuits
The Palaces of Abomey do not yield to a lone visitor. Our hosts tie the bas-reliefs, the restituted treasures and the true story of the Amazons into a single narrative. You leave with the pride of a heritage understood at last.
Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving 'Port', 1727-1892, James Currey, 2004, for the political context of the kingdom of Dahomey. Suzanne Preston Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power, University of Chicago Press, 1995, on the royal and Vodun art of the Abomey court. Stanley B. Alpern, Amazons of Black Sparta, New York University Press, 1998, on the Agojié. Content to be refined with the Wa Afriki local guides.