Ouagadougou

Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso and the centre of the Mossi kingdom, whose emperor the Moro Naba still holds a Friday dawn ceremony in the palace grounds that has been performed for centuries. The National Museum keeps masks and regalia from every ethnic group in the country, and the Village Artisanal gathers bronze casters, weavers and leather workers in one compound. Every second year the city hosts FESPACO, the largest film festival in Africa, and in the alternate years SIAO, the continent's biggest craft fair. Both give the city an outsized cultural weight.