THE ISLAND OF GORÉE – SENEGAL
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Gorée Island lies just two miles offshore off the coast of Dakar in Senegal and was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast. European powers, including the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French, took control of the island at various times, using it as a coastal trading point.
PHOTO CAPTION: Gorée Island. SOURCE: johnryle.com
Marked by an extremely painful past, the island of Gorée has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1978, as a living witness to a terrible page in the history of mankind. Gorée served as the largest centre of the slave trade from the 15th to the 19th century.
At the height of its use, Gorée Island served as a place where enslaved Africans were held before being transported to plantations across the Atlantic.
The most famous building on the island today is the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves), known for the symbolic “Door of No Return”, through which captives passed on their way to the ships. While historians debate the scale of slave traffic through Gorée compared to other ports, the island remains an internationally recognized symbol of the suffering caused by the slave trade.
Today, Gorée is a place of respect. The island evokes this past through its monuments, but it also offers a cultural offering open to the world and to the present.
