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Dakar History, Senegal

Dakar has a population totaling about one million and more than two and a half million living in the metropolitan area. It is the largest city and the capital of Senegal at the same time. It is also one of West Africa’s biggest cities and the heart of the country’s industrial, cultural and economical welfare.

It is set along the Atlantic coastline at the country’s western tip, in the Cape Verder Peninsula. The city is known for its very hectic and chaotic surroundings that, on the other hand, became its prime attraction to visitors. Across the coast is an island called Goree where slaves were shipped to a new location referred to as New World.

Senegal gained its independence in 1960 after three consecutive centuries when they were ruled by the French. During the ruling of the French, Dakar was French West Africa’s capital city which gave them nine French-speaking states. Since then, Dakar was known as the capital independent party of the Republic. The strong ties with France and its influences remained evident in the city’s architecture in the well-preserved monumental government houses, colonial buildings and café terraces.

Since it is located on the Cape Veder Peninsula’s mountain tip, this city has been breathing the modern way of life with its luxurious hotels, scenic restaurants, beaches, water sports recreations, casino buildings and a lively scene every night. It is one of Africa’s busiest ports serving many cruise ships every day.

Senegal is one of the many countries that are geographically situated very close to the United States. With this location, this country became Goreeg Island and West Africa’s slave depot at two miles off the coast; it has been the center of slave trading. Thousands of people including women children and men were kept and locked for days inside the cell in the island before the final shipment going to America. This slavery lasted for more than four years and now history calls it the Door of No Return.

Today Goree Island and the places were slaves has been housed became one of UNESCO’s most important Historical Monument. Most visitors would visit this spot and experience the horrors felt by the slaves in the past in La Maison des Enclaves. Inside that enclosure is a cold structure prison cell with shackles apartments of the slave dealer and other museums that are housed in old slave houses and built forts to hide the slave trade.