Gorée Island

Gorée is a small island twenty minutes by ferry from Dakar, held in turn by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The House of Slaves with its Door of No Return is the reason most visitors come, and it has become the principal place of memory for the Atlantic slave trade, visited by heads of state from around the world. No cars run on the island. Ochre and pink colonial houses with bougainvillea line narrow sand streets, and the Castel fort and its cannon look out over the Atlantic from the southern end.