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Oba's Palace, Benin City, Nigeria: Site of the Benin Kingdom's Monarchy for Centuries
The present dynasty built its palace on an earlier dynasty's cemetery, incorporating the ancestors who owned the land.
Ring Road, Benin City, Nigeria: Oba Erediauwa Square: Busy Central Roundabout, Former Palace Forecourt
This busy center city thoroughfare has an ancient history that periodically resurrects when palace chiefs process through the roundabout.
Manhyia Royal Palace: Seat of the Post-19th Century Asante Monarchs
Current Asante narrative stresses that the Asante insisted on paying the British for the new royal palace in 1925, so their ruler need not be beholden to the colonialists. British records show their…
Adum Royal Palace: From Empire's Core to a Shopping District
Throughout the 19th century, the five-acre Adum Royal Palace Complex was the center of an Empire that held its own against British onslaughts. Its death knell occurred in the 1890s, and the 20th…
Maboneng Precinct: A Trendy Post-Industrial, Post-Apartheid Paradise?
Transformed city spaces can take abandoned areas and turn them into urban magnets--but gentrification has its flip side.