Loropéni Ruins

Loropéni is the best preserved of a group of stone-walled enclosures scattered across the borderlands of Burkina Faso, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, and was the first site in the country inscribed by UNESCO. Laterite walls up to six metres high enclose a compound of about a hectare, built without mortar and still standing to nearly their full height. They are thought to be at least a thousand years old and connected with the trans-Saharan gold trade, but who built them and why they were abandoned is still unsettled. The ruins stand in quiet woodland.