Historic Town of Grand-Bassam

What UNESCO says

UNESCO describes the property in these words: “The first capital of Côte d’Ivoire, the Historic Town of Grand-Bassam, is an example of a late 19th- and early 20th-century colonial town planned with quarters specializing in commerce, administration, housing for Europeans and for Africans. The site includes the N’zima African fishing village alongside colonial architecture marked by functional houses with galleries, verandas and gardens. Grand-Bassam was the most important port, economic and judicial centre of Côte d’Ivoire. It bears witness to the complex social relations between Europeans and Africans, and to the subsequent independence movement. As a vibrant centre of the territory of French trading posts in the Gulf of Guinea, which preceded modern Côte d’Ivoire, it attracted populations from all parts of Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean Levant.”[1]

Inscribed

2012[1]

Category

Cultural[1]

Criteria

iii, iv[1]

Area

109.89 hectares[1]

Background

Grand-Bassam is a town in south-eastern Ivory Coast, east of Abidjan, and was briefly the French colonial capital in the late 19th century.[2] The Ébrié Lagoon divides the town in two. Ancien Bassam, facing the Gulf of Guinea, was the French settlement and has the grander colonial buildings, a cathedral and the National Museum of Costume in the former Governor's Palace.[2] Nouveau Bassam, across the bridge on the inland side, grew from the African servants' quarters and is now the main commercial centre.[2] The sub-prefecture had 124,567 people in 2021.[2]

A seaside town after the 2016 attack, as reported in 2023

France 24 reported in March 2023 that Grand-Bassam, some 40 kilometres from Abidjan, is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a huge beach on the Atlantic that was highly popular with tourists, expatriates and Ivorians alike.[3]

On 13 March 2016 three gunmen with Kalashnikovs attacked the resort; 19 people were killed, including nine foreigners, and 33 were injured. The attack, which lasted about three quarters of an hour, was claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Four men were sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2022, though the report says the trial shed little light on the attack.[3]