Ibadan

Ibadan spreads over a series of low hills and was for a long time the largest city in tropical Africa by area, a rolling expanse of rust-coloured corrugated roofs that is the city's defining image from Bower's Tower. It grew as a nineteenth century Yoruba war camp and became the intellectual centre of the country, with the University of Ibadan the oldest in Nigeria and its zoological garden and botanical gardens open to visitors. Mapo Hall, a colonial assembly building, crowns the highest hill. Cocoa House was once the tallest building in West Africa.