Heritage

Historic Town of Grand-Bassam

05°12′N 003°44′W · Comoé District

A former French colonial capital on the coast east of Abidjan, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for its colonial architecture and town planning.

Grand-Bassam served as the capital of the French colony of Côte d'Ivoire from 1893 until 1900, when the administration moved to Bingerville after a yellow-fever outbreak. Its colonial quarter, with its grid layout and early-20th-century buildings, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012 (reference 1322) under cultural criteria (iii) and (iv). The town later revived from the 1970s as a tourist and craft centre. It sits on a sandbar between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ébrié lagoon system.

Sources: [1] · [2]

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