Benin still shows the remains of two ancient enclosure walls with exterior ditches, known as iya in Edo, and "moat" in English. Parts of the earthen walls were up to 65 feet tall and originally covered with thorny bushes. The inner iya delineated the monarch's quarter, which included the palace as well as streets where royal guild members resided. The area enclosed by the outer iya was the territory of six of the seven Uzama chiefs who once exercised great political influence. Tradition ascribes the earliest walls to the reign of Oba Oguala in the 15th century, but archaeologists suggest dates that are several centuries earlier. Oba Ewuare is said to have deepened the ditches in the mid-15th century, and is said to have filled these originally dry channels with poisoned water. In the first half of the 16th century, Oba Esigie created a very short wall segment as a symbolic barrier; he had created a "new" Uzama after a conflict with the original group, and the new construction allowed them to assert they, too, lived beyond the walls of the inner iya. 

The walls are part of a huge earthworks system that demarcated communities in south-central Nigeria. The entire system is four times as long as the Great Wall of China and was erected between the 7th and 15th centuries. They served practical purposes (fees were charged those market women who entered the city's nine gates from rural areas) and had some defensive value, but were also conceived of as mystical barriers. In centuries past, corpses were tumbled into the ditches.

After the British occupation that began in 1897, the gates were no longer used and parts of the wall were removed for roads and other construction. The idiosyncratic artist Idah built his home into the wall back in the 1960s/70s, and many citizens carted away the walls' earth for their own construction projects. The iya system has since been proposed as a UNESCO cultural heritage site, and there are efforts to raise consciousness regarding its history.

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The Benin palace (eguae) shares many contemporary elements with royal accommodations worldwide: air conditioning, electricity, electronics, and a glamorous new facade–an innovation of the current monarch, Oba Ewuare II. Altars to the monarchs of the past, buried in the living quarters they once occupied, nonetheless remain the spiritual heart of this royal compound. Still, externals have always been important, for they reinforce the monarch’s ultimate social status.

Many of Benin’s architectural innovations began with the palace, whether they were Oba Esigie’s 16th-century introduction of a shingled roof, Oba Ovoranmwen’s late 19th-century novel use of corrugated metal sheeting for the same purpose, or his mirrored bedroom ceiling. Sumptuary laws still affect Benin architecture. Only the monarch and those chiefs to whom he grants the privilege may score their walls with the horizontal grooving (eken agben) that marks rank, a feature incorporated into current cement buildings, as well as older earthen construction techniques. When the latter were the norm, the palace had walls that were built from five to nine courses or layers high; most other citizens were limited to four, although a few privileged chiefs were permitted to have five. The earthen walls were thick—usually two to three feet at the base, thinning as they rose. That produced an insulating effect that, combined with shaded passages and the lack of exterior windows, helped to keep the interiors cooler.

Our knowledge of the original palace is limited. The first dynasty’s monarchs, known as the Ogiso, resided elsewhere in town, its location disputed. When the present Oranmiyan dynasty was initially established, the first few monarchs had their palace at Usama, in that sector of the city where the Usama chiefs who invited them lived. It was not until the reign of Oba Ewedo in the 14th century that the inner section of the town was breached. Ewedo built his palace where the royal residence still stands: land the indigenes had used as a cemetery. This ensured that the dynasty, which had entered Benin from the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, had suzerainty over the ancestral forces that owned the land. While the palace's structures have changed significantly over time, what little archaeology has occurred took place on what were once palace grounds—small areas on the Benin Museum grounds and the site of the former Clerk's Quarters. Even those limited excavations revealing. Connah discovered segments of pottery shard pavements reminiscent of Ile-Ife, their date coinciding with the Oranmiyan dynasty’s establishment of the current palace site. These dropped out of use long ago.

Extensive decoration marked palace structures. In the 16th century, Oba Esigie constructed a reception hall whose wooden verandah supports were decorated by over 800 brass plaques depicting court officials, animals, Portuguese visitors, and other subjects. Royal ancestral altars bore cast metal heads, carved ivory tusks, brass figures, wooden staffs and other decorations. Walls included patterns beyond fluting, and sometimes incorporated modeled clay tableaux. Wooden lintels decorated with interlace motifs or carved figurative scenes were visible in passageways, and patterned brass sheets decorated some lintels and doors. Cowrie shells, a precolonial currency, were pressed into some clay flooring in the form of animals or courtiers, a practice that flaunted the Oba’s wealth.

The palace was once considerably larger than it is today. Seventeenth-century visitors remarked on its many galleries and courts, as well as the reflective surfaces of its burnished red earthen walls, described by the 17th-century author Dapper as “as shining as a looking glass.” Towers topped by brass birds standing over snakes were visible over the perimeter walls, making the Oba’s home larger, taller, and far more imposing than any other city buildings. Like many African households, space within the palace moved inward, from public to private. Large-scale activities took place in the open areas and forecourts, while reception areas ranged from royal encounters with chiefs, subjects, and visitors to more intimate ones. Despite its size and costly decorations, the palace's basic design--rooms arranged around open courtyards with impluvia, bordered by shaded galleries with a compluvium opening in at the center--was aligned with that of chiefs and other citizens. When an Oba joined his ancestors, he was buried in the courtyard that held his suite of personal rooms, and the altar erected over his grave served as a focus for sacrifice and ritual. When his successor took the throne, he had new personal quarters erected.

Destruction–both accidental and deliberate–encouraged innovations via rebuilding. Goodwin’s limited excavations revealed that a single segment of the former royal compound that showed evidence of four successive blazes. Accidental fires periodically occurred, as in 1922, but succession disputes caused Oba Ewuare I to burn both palace and town, while the short-reigned Oba Egbebo restricted himself to torching the palace. The British were responsible for the greatest palace devastation, however. In 1897, in retaliation for the death of a few Britons (who had been warned not to come) eager to force Benin to become part of a “Protectorate” and agree to exclusive trade, the British Navy led an assault on the city. They fought their way to the palace, which the monarch finally had vacated during the bombardment, and took possession of kingdom. They used explosives on the area bordering the palace, in order to, as Roth put it, “enable the invaders to defend their positions should the Binis return to the fight.” Clearing the shrines of their altarpiece decorations, they removed personal and state objects for shipment to Britain, where they subsequently were sold and scattered to museums and collections worldwide. While the soldiers were bivouacked in the royal compound, the palace and ultimately much of the surrounding Ogbe quarter caught fire and burned for three days. After clearing the debris, colonial administrators carved up the extensive grounds. Roads cut through the space; the current museum complex, Ring Road, the prison and the former Clerk's Quarters were all once part of the palace.

In 1914, after the death of his father, Oba Eweka II took the throne and began reconstructing both structures and altars. He created a large freestanding courtyard, the ugha, that included both a joint altar for all prior monarchs, whose quadrangles had been destroyed, and individual altars to his father Oba Ovoranmwen and his grandfather Oba Adolor. This quadrangle is the site of some of ceremonies held during the December/January festival period, including Ugie Erhoba, which honors the current monarch’s father, and Ugie Iron, which recreates a 16th-century power struggle.

His son Oba Akenzua II 's innovations included a billiards room and air conditioning. Akenzua's palace commissions to the artist Ovia Idah included an enshrined cement and clay figure of late 15th-century/early 16th century Oba Ozolua (made ca. 1947-50). Erected in the open area in front of the present palace, its position marks where his courtyard once stood. This open area hosts palace ceremonies such as Igu’Oba, which honors the monarch’s head and destiny, and Ugi’Ewere, the celebration that closes the festival season. Idah also produced cement and clay portraits of royals that were part the palace’s façade at that time. In the 1960s, he replaced these deteriorated palace decorations with five reliefs of monarchs and two of royal wives, the effect recalling both the clay reliefs on former palace pillars and the hundreds of 16th-century brass plaques Oba Esigie had cast and nailed to the wooden supports of his reception court.

Some of Oba Erediauwa’s subjects urged him to create a palace in contemporary style like those of certain of his Yoruba counterparts, but he was uninterested. At the time of his installation he did, however, replace the earthen palace entry with a steel gate, and introduced other innovations that were less noticeable.

Oba Ewuare II completely revamped the palace’s public face before his installation in October of 2016, although he retained most of the structures behind the façade, as well as the courtyard with ancestral altars. Color integrates old and new: the red roofs of the new structures harmonize with the palace’s earthen walls and a small section of the newly paved forecourt, while new white structures match the repainted cement sections of old buildings, the front fencing, and the bulk of the forecourt. The palace’s new entry building is a sizable two-story streamlined Neoclassical mansion, its entrance marked with a columned portico. The emphasis on red and white reflects these colors’ symbolic importance: white stands for purity and peace, and is the color associated with Olokun, the deity of the sea whose palace the monarch’s is said to imitate; red, on the other hand, is associated with power.

Today’s palace compound still includes a sacred grove, as well as a school for male pages, the Oba’s secretary's office, a library, and the Benin Traditional Council's suite, as well as the royal ancestral shrines, shrines to other deities, meeting and reception rooms, and the private quarters of the Oba and his wives. As residence, ritual and administrative center, and site of annual celebrations, the palace was and is physically the center of the Benin Kingdom's capital, with the main market located nearby. Through the centuries, its days were filled by chiefs, priests, citizens, and visitors, but at night it housed only the monarch, his wives, infant children, and male and female pages. Older royal children lived outside the palace and were raised by various chiefs.

Many parts of the palace are off-limits to most people. Chiefs belonging to the Eghaevbo n’Ogbe category are affiliated with one of three palace societies and have access only to general spaces and those quadrangles reserved for their specific group: Iwebo, the largest group, concerned mostly with administrative duties, public functions, and royal objects and dress; Iweguae, which cares for the Oba’s ancestors and his royal person; and Ibiwe, which looks after the harem and children. Courtyards have particular functions, as Dmochowski noted; one is devoted to the storage of state drums, another is earmarked for the enisen wardrobe officials. Many of the courtyards are site of altars to various deities, and include visible protective medicines. It is likely that the walls themselves contain amulets and other devices, for the British discovered certain bronzes within the walls, invisible to passers-by.

Even on a quiet day, the palace hosts numerous chiefs, pages, and visitors both lofty and humble. At times of royal ceremonies, its grounds flood with people. As an Edo proverb has it, "The palace full to capacity is the Oba's happiness."

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Chief Nosa Isekhure, the hereditary chief priest of the Oba, belongs to the Ihogbe guild, the palace group that tends the royal ancestors. The Erimwi-Idu royal ancestral shrine was erected in his home for convenient prayer centuries ago, as was an altar to his own ancestors. Newly-made chiefs stopped at the royal shrine when celebrating their titles in a procession through the city.

In 1995, he gave his home a facelift, employing sculptors to add a figurative balustrade and adorn the roofline with relief sculpture. He incorporated his title, as well as an item associated with him--the ukhurhe, or ancestral staff, covered with red ododo cloth. Chief Isekhurhe held the staff in ceremonies when he prayed for the Oba.

When Oba Ewuare II was crowned in October of 2016, Isekhure refused to participate in some key rites and offended the monarch. Some months later, the Traditional Council carried out the Oba's will and stripped him of the privileges and responsibilities of his title. In January of 2017 the palace took control of the royal shrine, destroyed part of the facade, and sealed the front entrance to the home.

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St. Matthew's Cathedral is part of the Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, and the oldest surviving church in Benin. It opened in 1902, just after the Church Missionary Society (CMS) established itself in the city. The land for the church was donated by a convert, Madam Arokunbo Ovoranmwen,  one of Oba Ovoranmwen's widows, for it had been the site of her father's house. Interest in Christianity increased rapidly; in only its sixth year of operation, it witnessed 85 baptisms. 

The Cathedral's basilica form is flanked by twin belltowers, a typical floorplan for Christian churches, but its hasty erection meant its form was streamlined, without the decorative features that marked its counterparts in EuropeAt the time it was built, however, it was the tallest structure in the city, giving it architectural primacy. It became the royal church in 1931, when Oba Eweka II began to attend regular, a habit continued by Oba Akenzua II, who held a thanksgiving service at St. Matthew's the day after his coronation. At least nine additional Anglican churches are now in Benin, as well as numerous Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal Christian churches. 

Its associated school, the St. Matthew's CMS Day School, was the only mission-run educational institution in Benin for a decade; with only one public elementary school (the first public secondary school in Benin did not open until 1937). Western education in the city lagged far behind that of western Nigeria, where the British had established a Board of Education in Lagos as early as 1877. 

St. Matthew's marks a memorable location, for the land near it marks the current dynasty's takeover of the inner city in the 14th century. Oba Ewedo, the dynasty's fourth ruler, came to terms with the city's republican leader Chief Ogiamien after a battle between their two forces. Their agreement took place at Ekiopagha market by St. Matthew's. Until Oba Ewuare II's 2016 coronation, the treaty between the Oba and the incumbent Chief Ogiamien was reenacted a week after every coronation. its location had marked a border of sorts between the territories until the indigenes, led by Chief Ogiamien, and the area nominally controlled by the monarchy. The initial treaty acknowledged the sovereignty of the Oba and he established his palace within the city.

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Benin City's National Museum was, in 1944, the second museum to be established in the country, under the auspices of Oba Akenzua II. He first hosted a collection of antiquities in the palace, some of which had been uncovered during 20th-century royal construction. This included a large brass snake's head of the type that had formerly hung on the palace towers, as well as several hip pendants, a figure, and large shield-shaped plaques whose thinness, style, and metallic content suggested an early date. This initial collection developed into Benin's National Museum, with local historian Chief Jacob Egharevba serving as its first curator. It moved to the colonial tax office on Ring Road, then back to the Divisional Council within palace grounds, then into the colonial post office. In 1960, it was handed over to the government. The impetus for museum foundation and the establishment of a federal Department of Antiquities came from a British colonial education officer, Kenneth C. Murray. In the early 1970s, when oil revenue fueled infrastructures, Gov. S. O. Ogbemudia funded the construction of a new dedicated building on King's Square, the centrally-located circle surrounded by the city's Ring Road. This land had been part of the palace complex before the 1987 British invasion, but in 1973 it was opened to the public as a cultural display site.

Its rounded Brutalist exterior echoes the circular parcel of land where the museum stands. Antithetical to the traditional rectangular courtyard architecture of the ancient kingdom, it does, however, mimic those structures' reddish earth color, albeit through cement. A 1976 exterior mosaic by Yoruba artist Jimoh Buraimoh depicts a lively abstracted court scene of an Oba (presumably Oba Akenzua, as he wears circular spectacles) surrounded by chiefs, courtiers, and shield-bearing figures drawn from 16th-century plaques.

The building's three floors consisted of displays that remained consistent for decades, with the exception of a 1982 special exhibition of repurchased Benin arts. The first (ground) floor was dedicated to mostly pre-1897 antiquities, some of which had been purchased back from Britain when Nigeria was still a colony. This area included exhibits of partially-reconstructed royal altars, albeit with objects clearly separated from one another for display purposes. The second floor included some Benin City objects of more recent manufacture, including divination equipment, as well as pottery, masks, and other artworks from elsewhere in the former Bendel State (now divided into Edo and Delta States). The third floor included wooden sculpture, masks, and additional art from other regions of Nigeria. In late September 2017, however, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art brought their exhibition “Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer to the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria” to the museum as part of its permanent installation.

Although limited archaeology has been conducted in Benin City, in 1961-62 Graham Connah investigated the area earmarked for the new museum's construction. While the area was likely the site of the large open gathering place just in front of palace structures, over twenty sections of pre-14th century potsherd pavement were found in a pit. This type of terracotta paving was atypical of Benin City, but is known to have been a feature of the Yoruba city of Ife to the northwest; Benin's present dynasty is said to have originated from Ife. Other cuttings yielded pottery remains and a trussed skeleton, suggesting human sacrifice and/or execution, the former practiced at the palace in past centuries during ceremonies or times of crisis.

When the British established their colonial government in Benin City, they cut roads through the former palace grounds and cleared buildings. The area where the museum now stands became their Public Works Department, site of urban planning. The British introduced "burnt bricks," as opposed to sun-dried bricks, as a civic building material, using metal molds to form the local clay and emboss it with the imperial crown. Both manufacturing and kiln-firing of the bricks was done along the banks of the Ikpoba River.

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The Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre, designed by Nigerian artist Demas Nwoko, is centrally located in Benin City near the palace. Benin's premier venue for plays, video debuts, and other performances, it also hosts weddings, symposia, other social events, and occasionally serves temporary purposes, such as a mobile court..

Its exterior draws upon traditional Benin City aristocratic architecture in both color--an imitation of the local reddish clay in a cast sandcrete of Nwoko's own devising (a mix of cement, sand, and pebble-filled lateritic soil)--and in its horizontal ridges, a royal privilege the monarch grants many of his chiefs. Its shape, however, departs sharply from the rectilinear courtyard compounds of the Edo, favoring a semicircle that follows the curve of the theatre's seating.

Nwoko originally designed the building as a University of Benin theatre in 1972, but it ultimately became a government-funded civic structure that opened in 1993. It seats between 200 to 700 people, depending on whether the forestage and orchestra pit are in use. The structure's two stories accommodate highly pitched seating as well as two roomy hallways sometimes used for exhibitions.

Nwoko added exterior textural interest through window screening that alternates panels of vertically-oriented staggered rectangles with others consisting of diamond patterns. The staircase and select small areas of the exterior are enclosed by concrete openwork, and passive cooling aspects are incorporated, although the building is also air-conditioned.

Nwoko developed a keen interest in architecture at an early age, and became familiar with Benin architecture during his secondary school days in Benin City. By the time he enrolled in the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in 1957 (subsumed by the newly-created Ahmadu Bello University while he was still a student), his direction had shifted to fine arts. His subsequent work included both painting and Nok-inspired terracotta sculpture. While at ABU, he became part of the Art Society, a group of students inspired by a will to integrate traditional arts with their Western-oriented training to create a kind of nationalistic authenticity.

Nwoko's buildings remain some of the few major Nigerian structures that draw visible inspiration from earlier traditions within the country. Although he has been criticized by Nigerian architectural historians because of his lack of formal training as an architect, his buildings have received international attention.

In 2017, Edo State's governor temporarily made the Centre the site of a motor park until a city-wide motor park could be constructed. A market has sprung up on the grounds to service passengers, and the grounds and structure have deteriorated. This may not be long-lived, for Oba Ewuare II called for its refurbishment during his announcement of the establishment of a Benin Royal Academy of Performing Art in 2017.

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Ring Road is one of Benin City's busiest intersections, with major roads such as Akpakpava, Airport, Sapele, Forestry, Old Sakpoba, and other streets running off the roundabout in spoke-like fashion. In the middle stands the National Museum, Benin City, as well as a small children's amusement park and other public structures. Around its perimeter are numerous commercial and governmental buildings, examples of colonial architecture, and numerous public sculptures. The latter are a notable feature of Benin City, and the then-Bendel Arts Council initiated the program in 1987 with four statues. Their numbers have grown significantly; while many were in place by the 1990s. figurative depictions of historic monarchs multiplied have multiplied in the past decade or so.

This area was part of the pre-1897 royal palace, consisting of sections of its many courtyards, as well as its huge forecourt and the shrine to Ogiuwu, the deity of death. Some even attribute the many traffic accidents on Ring Road as the deity's continued efforts to "feed." British colonial occupation cut through the palace, clearing certain areas for new construction. What is now Ring Road's "island" became the site of the British fort and barracks, providing an overview and a challenge to the remaining palace buildings, as well as the reconstructed palace after the monarchy's 1914 restoration.

Urhokpota ("Okpota's gate") Hall, another early colonial building, is also located along Ring Road. Its name refers to a ritual specialist named Okpota, who came to Benin from the Esan (Ishan) area during Oba Ozolua's reign. He told the monarch he could produce a charm that would draw wealth, and the Oba tested him by ordering Okpota to first use it himself. When the ruler saw gifts pouring in, he commissioned his own charms, which were buried under one of the palace entrances Built in 1906, it is one of the oldest colonial structures in Benin. Although British-built, the Native Council collected taxes for its payment, and it was used as a traditional court while the Oba was exiled in Calabar and no ruler was on the throne. Today it is the site of the public coronation of the Oba and first public reveal of his throne name. He then leaves and enters the nearby palace.

This city sector receives periodic facelifts because of its central site. During Adams Oshiomhole's governorship (2008-2016), a series of illuminated "dancing" fountains was installed, as were gardens and extensive landscaping. The 2016 enthronement of Oba Ewuare II brought further updates. Despite government efforts to create a park-like environment, however, the iron fence around the traffic island continues to host banners that advertise events and products, and shop-less merchants have crept back, using surrounding sidewalks as an open-air market.

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When the British allowed Asantehene Prempeh I to return from exile in the Seychelles Islands and resume his position as "Kumasihene" (a term that attempted to limit his sovereignty to Kumase), their former actions left him no palace to return to. Upon his return in 1924, he took up temporary quarters in the new neighborhood known as Asafo. The British decided a "bungalow" in their own style would be most suitable, and planned to build it in Manhyia, rather than in the old palace site of Adum, which has since been commercialized.

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The Asantehene ruled the Asante Empire from his residence in Kumase, but lack of archaeological work at the capital means our knowledge of palace structure and location are limited before the 19th century. In 1817, when Bowdich became the first European to travel to Kumase, the palace covered a large expanse in what is now Adum, with the market nearby. During Bowdich's diplomatic mission to Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame Asiba Bonsu (r. 1804-1824), he noted that the palace was about a half-mile from the town's southern entry point, approached through a long street. It was walled off from the town, though each end of the wall ended at the nearby marshlands. 

In 1817, Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame Asiba Bonsu relayed his dreams of a new palace to Bowdich, the first European to reach Kumase. The structure would have a brass roof and be built on ivory columns, with gold and silver lining the windows and door. These dreams, stoked by conversations with his Muslim advisors from the north, were still on his mind three years later, when he talked to the British consul, Joseph Dupuis.

Although the monarch continued to refer to brass and ivory, his attention had turned to the European coastal forts for inspiration. He had begun construction, but had shifted his plans for brass, gold, and ivory to the interior, stating, “I am building a fort like Cape Coast Castle; but I shall make it very high that I may look out and see all the town.” His intention was to subvert European perceptions for political reasons, for he added, "Now white men know me, I must live in a great house as white kings do; then I shall not be ashamed when more white people come."

The structure was made of stone that had to be brought by hand from the coast, and its foreignness was underlined by its height, which dwarfed even two-storied earthen structures. It did not begin to approach Cape Coast Castle or any of the other forts in size, but included a tower, paved inner courtyard, far more shuttered windows than most Asante structures, several staircases, and decorative balustrades at three levels. In addition, its flat roof stood in contrast to the sharply pitched thatch of surrounding palace buildings, allowing for elevated viewing. Along with the earthen palace buildings that surrounded it, it stood behind a palisade fence of lashed bamboo-like posts.

Upon its completion in 1822, the Asantehene named it after King George IV, the reigning British monarch, and Dupuis suggested suitable sacrifices for its dedication, supplying a silk British flag to fly. Though he wrote about it as "a private token of friendship," it is difficult to believe a state envoy would see it as anything other than a sign of conquest, despite Britain's continued struggles with the Asante.

Two new Asantehenes followed. Kwaku Dua I was on the throne during an 1839 visit by Methodist missionary Thomas Birch Freeman. The fort, known by its Twi name, Aban, was still the only stone structure in Kumase. in 1841, Freeman compared its size to one of "the small villas in the vicinity of London," and noted a table bearing 31 gold-handled swords, as well as others with the ruler's gold-covered drinking calabashes or imported glassware, gold chains, and nuggets.

In 1872, Asantehene Kofi Karikari requested the British governor at the coast send him chalk and oil colors to refurbish the "stone house." The monarch soon directed his paroled prisoner, Rev. Frederick Ramseyer, to build him an additional two-story European-style house--this time from sun-dried brick--with a crew of Fante workers. Heavy rains later that year, however, damaged both the new house and the stone Aban.

By 1874, Kofi Karikari's conflicts with the British resulted in the latter's successful invasion of Kumase and the British collection of gold dust and other loot from the palace and chiefs' homes. Stanley remarked that the Aban's rooms were "lofty and commodious, and those occupied by his Majesty are furnished with European and native articles. The presents he has been continually receiving diplomatically have assisted in supplying him with unusual luxuries. Pictures adorn the walls; sumptuous sofas are ranged round his walls; thick carpets cover his floors; his tables are loaded with a thousand costly knick-knacks."

Stanley inventoried the items found on the upper floors of the Aban, which he considered the Asantehene's residence. They included gold nuggets, locally-made gold jewelry, stools, gold-decorated rifles, and linguist staffs. European goods were varied, ranging from silver flatware to porcelain and Delftware, carpets to an oil painting and prints.

Boyle observed that "the palace is apparently used as a treasure-house exclusively. The King prefers his native architecture, which is not without elegance," noting the monarch's earthen residence, site of his bedroom, stood immediately behind the Aban; Sir Garnet Wolseley, who led the British troops placed the Asantehene's bedroom and four-poster bed in the Aban itself.

In the stone house, Boyle saw Dutch engravings, a magic lantern, an ivory ship's model, and busts of the Duke of Wellington, as well as silver-decorated calabashes, velvet state umbrellas, and four gold "masks", (Stanley recorded seven) which were actually ornaments. In addition, the shaded courtyard area stored his palm wine, champagne, and brandy.

Some of the booty--the Asantehene's wives' ornaments, two of his gold pipes, a silver coffeepot, and a sword from Queen Victoria--was packed up and taken to Cape Coast where it sold for between 5000-6000 pounds (in the neighborhood of half a million 2017 dollars). Other valuables were considered part of the indemnity paid to the Crown by the defeated monarch, and the famed Garrard jewelry house auctioned them in London.

Wolseley destroyed the Aban with dynamite and had the town torched. He stated, "I believe that the result will be such a diminution in the prestige and military power of the Ashantee monarch as may result in the break-up of the kingdom altogether."

The city's recovery from the 1874 conflagration was slow. Although some palace buildings were rebuilt or refurbished, the stone structure was not. Some of its stones were salvaged and stored xxx, and in 1897 they were incorporated in both the newly-built Residency and Fort, which shared a wall. Henderson noted, however, that most of the Fort itself was built from bricks. This structure spoke to both the permanence the British hope they had achieved in their occupation of Kumase, as well as their unease regarding the current political situation. After the 1874 war, his counselors forced Asantehene Kofi Karikari to resign. Several brief reigns and regencies followed, until internal conflicts were resolved and the teen-aged Asantehene Prempeh I was enstooled in 1888. Britain tried to coerce him into agreeing to a Protectorate, and his repeated refusals led to an 1896 invasion and annexation, as well as Prempeh I's deposition and arrest. The fort and residency together marked the center of Kumase's colonization, both militarily and administratively.

The Fort had a deep well and storage buildings, but its most notable features were its gun towers, their corrugated roofs painted white, with wooden roofs and an air space under the metal--the whole designed to create a cooler vantage point. Henderson noted that all "the arrangements are admirably adapted to enable the guns and Maxims [ a mounted rapid-fire machine gun invented in 1883] with which it is provided to sweep a space which has been cleared all around it."

On March 25, 1900 Kumase saw the first visit of the Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir. F. M. Hodgson. He proceeded towards the fort under a triumphal arch, passing an assembly of Asante chiefs and provincial rulers who then processed past the governor, who was seated on the Residency's verandah like an emperor reviewing the troops. They reassembled three days later, when he informed them they needed to begin paying towards the 1874 indemnity demanded of Asantehene Kofi Karikari. His next statement was incendiary. As Armitage, an eyewitness, put it, "The Governor proceeded to ask where the Golden Stool was, and why it had not been given up to him as representative of the Great White Queen."

By April 2, the Asante at Bali village engaged a small British party who had come lookng for ammunition and the Golden Stool in gunfire, singing (in Armitage's "rough translation"), "The Governor came up to Kumasi on a peace palaver. He demanded money from us and sent white men to bring him the Golden Stool. Instead of money the Governor shall have the white men's heads sent to him to Kumasi. The Golden Stool should be well washed in the white men's blood."

Although they fought their way back to Kumase and the fort, the Asante were massing for war under the direction of Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa of Ejisu, a kingdom about ten miles northeast of Kumase. The fort became a refuge for the Governor, his wife, a handful of British officers, missionairies, mining engineers, clerks, servants, and Asante officials (some loyal to the British, others detained by them), as well as about 500 Hausa troops and their families. Telegraph lines had already been laid in Kumase, but after a plea for reinforcements from Nigeria had been sent, the Asante cut the line. A two-month siege began. Negotiations in May included an Asante demand: the Fort should be destroyed. British reinforcements arrived in Kumase on May 15, and at the cessation of fighting Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa was exiled to the Seychelles Islands. She died there in 1921, but when Prempeh I returned from the islands to Kumase, he had her body and those of other exiled Asante who had died returned to Kumase for proper burial.

The fort continued to house colonial military forces, although unfortified barracks were built nearby, until 1952-53, when the British Army converted the structure into a military museum. It became a Ghanaian museum at the country's 1957 independence, and its exhibits consist of arms and related objects, many confiscated during wars with other nations. Swords, tanks, planes, photographs, and other military memorabilia from Ghana, Italy, Japan, and elsewhere.

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The Residency was the home of the British colonial Resident in Kumase, initially sited next to the Fort, the administrative and military center. First erected temporarily in 1895/96 from wood, by 1896 it had transformed into a three-story stone building. The upper two stories had wrap-around verandahs, typical of British colonial style. Both verandahs and the elevated site it stood on allowed surveillance over much of the town. These first two incarnations of the Residency were part of the palisaded military compound of the Kumase Fort, erected during a period when colonization was still shaky.

The granite used for its construction had come from the coast, transported by Asantehene Kofi Karikari for his stone Aban. After its destruction, the stones had been stored on the hill above the Muslim Zongo community, but were moved back to be mortored together again. Glass windows were imported, and the building included four similarly-sized rooms on the first two floors, with a large central entry and staircase. Construction costs for the more permanent structure amounted to 13,816 pounds, the equivalent of over $2 million today. Home to both acting and permanent Residents, it was also the site of palaver discussions with Asante chiefs during the exile of Asantehene Prempeh II.

In 1900, both the Residency and the rest of the fort compound were filled with the British, their employees, missionaries, Hausa forces, allies, and some Asante hostages during a two-month siege prompted by the Governor's demand for the Golden Stool. Governor Hodgson and his wife, who had been visiting Kumase, stayed in the Residency during this period, as did two officers, three doctors, and two mining engineers, while others were housed in the fort, outbuildings and the gardens. As they awaited military relief, Armitage noted, "there would be a rush to the top room of the Residency, where every one would stand at the windows listening and looking intently at the tree-tops, far below which the Cape Coast road wound along." Dinner and tea parties with limited rations, as well as card games, were directed by Lady Hodgson as the conflict continued. The siege's end marked a British consolidation of power in Kumase.

From 1922-24, a new Residency was built further from the fort--though still in an elevated area--the need for defense abrogated by a now firmly established colonial presence. This broader two-story structure included multiple arched loggias on its ground floor, echoed by the second floor terrace's arcaded balustrade. Several wings expanded its size, the overall effect emphasizing the imposing. Freed from military associations, its increased grandeur spoke to cultural imperialism and both social and physical distance from the bulk of the town's citizens.

It had become the pinnacle of British social life in Kumase. Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Marie Louise, stayed at the Residency during several points of her 1925 Gold Coast tour. She referred to it as "charming, a really comfortable house," noting its "luxury" of electric lighting and fans, soft carpets, upholstered chairs, gardens, and newly laid-out trees.

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The Public Works Department (PWD) played a major role in early and later Anglophone colonial architecture and utilities. Although operative in the Ghana's coastal area as early as 1850, the PWD's Kumase presence did not commence until about half a century later, due to Asante independence that ended in 1900. Initially responsible even for the very production of "burnt bricks" and the creation of wooden shingles, the PWD's architects and engineers planned, created or supervised the construction and maintenance of municipal buildings, roads, bridges, water systems, harbors, and other infrastructural aspects. Their reshaping of landscapes in the early years of colonialism was a given, and favored European goals. Initially, African participation was deliberately limited to laborer status.

After the 1900 Anglo-Asante war, the European presence in Kumase solidified. By 1905, Kumase had only one British supervisor, who saw to the construction of the "native" hospital, market sheds, improvements to the male prison and military structures, a slaughterhouse, and "enclosure of the European water supply", as well as cemented street drains. By the following year, the city saw a female prison and the addition of a hospital, dispensary, and kitchen to the male prison, the initial construction of a European hospital, police headquarters and an additional station in the Muslim Zongo quarter (20 constables and three senior officers total). No government school had yet been established.

The PWD's road work stepped up in 1916 with the construction of the Kumase-Ejura road, specifically meant for vehicles. This inaugurated plans for rapid increases that saw 300% expansion within a year or two, but the trunk road between Accra and Kumase, was still not completed in 1937--probably because a railroad had covered this route since 1906. In the early colonial period, the PWD took responsibility for roads designed to connect desirable resources to ports, directing the chiefs to create and maintain roads from smaller polities to regional centers.

By 1937, the city as a whole had pipe-borne water and electrification was complete. Completed PWD construction now included four public schools, provincial police headquarters, expanded police and military barracks, extensive civil service housing, and a divisional Supreme Court.

In the 1940s, the Kumase PWD constructed an airport and cemetery. Although British consulting firm were still involved in major projects, the level of local participation had increased. The future Asantehene Opoku Ware II trained as a surveyor and draughtman, and worked for the Kumase PWD from 1941 to 1943.

The Kumase PWD still operates, now controlling maintenance and construction of government offices, housing and other property in the city. It still makes use of the two-story colonial structure with its decorative quoins, louvers, and ground floor pilasters. Many structures built by the PWD, such as Manhyia Palace and civil service bungalows, still stand.

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This building and its annexes house the Edo State High Court, as well as the offices of the state judiciary. Several parts of the facade bear relief work by Ben Osawe (1931-2007). His three-story rendering is linear and geometric in conception, showing a figure dressed in the traditional beluku skirt-like garment while flourishing the ada ceremonial sword that indicates the right to take life. "Justice" is similarly linear, and is a Benin version of the blindfolded figure with scales in one hand.

Osawe, born to a father who was a Benin palace carver, but trained himself as a signmaker. He then schooled overseas in London, first at the School of Graphic Art, then at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. He returned to Nigeria in 1966, but it took more than a decade for him to leave Lagos and take up residence in Benin City again. Familiar with many media--cement, metal, and wood--most of his work was modernist, ranging from the abstract to totally non-objective directions, although he also created several naturalistic bronzes, including one of Oba Erediauwa..

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The Oduduwa monument can be found within the grounds of Afewonro Park, located in Enuwa Square near the Ooni’s palace. The fiberglass figure, at the center of the city, represents Oduduwa, the Yoruba orisha or deity who descended from the heavens to become the first monarch. Two main versions of the Yoruba creation myth exist. In one, Obatala descended from the heavens with a calabash of sand and a chicken--the primordial ocean lay below. The chickens scratched out the sand, land formed, and the other orisha followed Obatala/Orisanla down the chain. He then created human beings. A second version, subscribed to in Ife, states that Obatala stopped on the way to his task, drank palm wine, and fell asleep. The High God Olodumare sent Oduduwa to find out what had happened, and Oduduwa completed the job. Once land was formed, he descended an iron chain to Oke Ora, a hill just outside Ife, and from there settled in the town itself.  

At some point before 2001, the sculptor Abuede, a Lagos-based artist, created the sculpture of Oduduwa grasping a staff resembling that of an Ifa diviner in his right hand. He wears a traditional Yoruba flowing, toga-like, unembroidered cloth. Upon his head is the famous aare beaded crown. Its characteristic shape--flattened, curved halves, along with the addition of a protruding crest at the forehead and the iconic cascading beaded fringe--are features of the actual crown. Although this crown, unique to Ife, is identified with the Ooni (monarch of Ife), it is quite different from the crowns that appear on sculpture from the 11th-15th centuries. The beading arrangement on the statue's neck and torso, however, imitate the royal jewelry arrangement visible on these early sculptures. The medicine horn grasped in Oduduwa's left hand also mimics these celebrated bronzes. The contemporary sculpture is more realistic than its naturalistic antecedents, however, for it has natural proportions and unidealized features that include smile lines.

Afewonro Park consists of a fenced-in section of the narrow triangle of land bounded by roads, just outside the Ooni's palace. It was the site of both of the current monarch's formal installation and the interdenominational service that honored his predecessor. It was formed not long before 2001, having been used as an informal gathering place and mosque before then. Its green lawn and flowers also host the masonry Tower of Independence, a colonial-style clocktower.

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The Fez medina's Nejjarine Museum of Wooden Arts and Crafts has not always been a museum. It was built in 1711 as a fondouk (fondak), a lodging house for travelers that included a courtyard where merchants stored and sold their wares. Its name was Fondak En Nejjarin or Caravanserai of the Guild of Carpenters, and the carpenters' market is still nearby. The scales merchants used to measure their goods before sales remain in the courtyard. While commercial activity centered on the ground level, merchants' quarters were upstairs.

Like most medina lodgings, the fondouk was built around this courtyard, where a fountain helped weary travelers keep cool during the hot months. Ornately carved columns that support the next two levels surround the courtyard, which was once open to the sky. Each floor has a balcony that overlooks the interior fountain, its woodwork attesting to carpenters' skills. The Nejjarine fountain, covered in zellij tilework, stands just outside the building. Although it might seem to be an independent structure, its typical horseshoe arch and other details match the fondouk's architecture, an intentional choice, since it was erected in the first half of the 19th century. Underneath the fountain's small arch is decorative zellij tile work, which also surrounds the basin in a simpler form. Even the fountain's ceiling is tiled, its design employing thicker lines of yellow tile. along with darker blues and reds. The fountain was used for ablutions, where visitors performed the ritual purification known as wudu--the washing of hands, feet, mouth, face, nose, head, and ears with intention.

In 1916, the Moroccan government recognized both fondouk and fountain as national monuments, pieces of history worth saving. Their restoration, sponsored by the Fondation Mohammed Karim Lamrani, was completed in 1998, and the former fondouk became a museum that features Morocco's famed wood carvings. With its luxurious interior, it is in a fortunate state of preservation. Other fondouk structures in Fez and elsewhere in Morocco are undergoing restoration with World Bank funds. Some may be repurposed, while others plan to revert to their original lodging function.

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Located in the old part of Zaria, known as Birnin Zazzau (walled city of Zaria) or Zaria City, the gate (kofar gida) to the Emir's palace stands out as a colorful representation of the Hausa people and their ruler. The decorative designs on the façade reflect the stylistic characteristics of many Hausa buildings and art objects, and the gate itself is known throughout the region as an important cultural structure.

During the reign of Sarkin Ibrahim (r. 1924-1936), a new gate with a central arch was installed. Cars and horses could enter through the archway, while pedestrians passed through an open doorway to the right side. The thickness of the gate meant it could actually serve as a building, and the area to the left of the arch was used as a classroom. Like traditional Hausa homes, the roofline was punctuated by horn-like vertical projections known as zanko, At the time, this gate was whitewashed, its exterior decorated with large, abstract, curvilinear reliefs. Its earthen construction required resurfacing for maintenance, enabling periodic change.

The two succeeding Emirs, Ja'afaru (r. 1936-1959) and Mohammadu Aminu (1959-1975), ordered further embellishments and changes to the entrance. Under Sarkin Mohammadu Aminu’s reign, the motif size was decreased and became more intricate. By 1963, these reliefs were picked out in color. Sarkin Shehu Idris (r. 1975-) demolished the old kofar gida and erected a new gate in 1980-81. Alhaji Haruna, Zaria's then-master builder and descendent of Mallam Mikaila, the architect of the Zaria mosque, supervised the redesign, which abandoned earthen construction. The new building materials consisted of a concrete frame and cement blocks. Cement was combined with specially prepared mud and shaped by hand to create the relief decoration on the exterior.

Motifs on the present gate include some of the original royal symbols, such as the staff of office, sword, and gun, all located at eye level on the wall section between vehicle and pedestrian openings. Daguna (s., dagi) or knot patterns appear throughout the design. The dagi or wise-man’s knot is a symbol that commonly appears on both Hausa buildings and Hausa embroidery and leatherwork. The conception of the dagi and other symbols seem to have been inspired by the cursive letters of Kufic Arabic script, then became the more abstract motifs that we see on the palace gate. Arabic script was considered sacred and therefore possessed supernatural powers of protection. Both legible and imitative script are hidden within sewn leather amulets for personal protection, and are considered equally effective. Manipulated and abstracted, the calligraphic forms can also serve as a protection for both real and figurative entrances. After the 1840s, relief decoration--first on interiors only, then on exteriors--flourished as one of the most distinct design elements of Zaria architecture, influencing Hausa design in general. Because Islam is the dominant religion of the Hausa, its artistic vocabulary is traditionally made up of geometric patterns, since figurative imagery is forbidden, due to the belief that only God can create life.

Many of the shapes and patterns typically found in Islamic art can be traced back to the late antique Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds, they have been embellished and made more intricate; some appear to have a local origin. Their use in architectural surface reliefs is distinctively Hausa, highlighted on the relief ornamentation of the Zaria palace gate. Even as this form of house decoration is diminishing among the city's wealthy, the banner of tradition (albeit of short duration) labels the palace.

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One of Cape Town’s most stunning works of architecture is Mutual Heights, formerly called the Old Mutual Building and the Mutual Building, Located in Cape Town Central, it is a masterpiece of Art Deco architecture. Since its opening in 1940, its structural majesty has retained its architectural magic.

The architects were Capetown native Frederick McIntosh Glennie and the firm Louw & Louw. Glennie and Louw & Louw’s lead architect, Wynand Henry Louw, travelled to Paris and America from 1933-34 to learn how to design and construct a skyscraper that would successfully represent the dignity and strength the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society (now Old Mutual) desired for their company’s new headquarters. After this international research, the architects decided the Art Deco style best suited the company’s needs. The skylines of New York and Los Angeles--successful cities that had adopted Art Deco earlier—were particular inspirations. The commission began in 1936.

The skyscraper is made of reinforced concrete faced with granite and marble, with bricks, plaster, and stainless steel used as well. Its ziggurat-style exterior and prismoid windows were both architecturally intriguing and functional features for the time. When it first opened in 1940, it was the tallest building in Africa at eighteen stories high. Each floor was separated by an average of 16.4 feet, creating extremely high ceilings. Water-cooled air conditioning and extremely fast elevators were both innovations.

Old Mutual, founded in Cape Town in 1845, was the country’s first life insurance company. Its values and outlook at the time the building was created were unsurprisingly conservative and colonial in nature. Evidence of these attitudes clearly appears in the carved stoned frieze that lines the exterior of the building. This frieze, one of the longest in the world at 386 feet, was designed by Ivan Mitford-Barberton and sculpted by Italian immigrant Adolfo Lorenzi and four of his brothers. Its fifteen sections feature a timeline of Cape Town’s colonization, wars, and emancipation of slaves, as well as the colonization of other parts of South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), missionary activities in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Tanganyika (Tanzania), and Arab resistance to Turkish attack in Kenya. Old Mutual worked in all of these British colonies. As Freschi observed, the scenes show “conflation of South African history with corporate policy,” and also stress the white male colonists as actors, while the Africans are acted upon, and female colonists are primarily observers.

All the exterior ornamentation emphasizes the luxury and status of this Art Deco structure. Nine granite figures stand above the Parliament Street building frieze, representing the upper torsos of men from nine southern and east African ethnic groups. If some of their distinctive hairstyles or hats are ambiguous, they are clearly labeled: Xosa (sic), Pedi, Maasai, Matabele, Basuto, Barotse, Kikuyu, Zulu, and Bushman (sic). These granite sculptures were included to accentuate and represent African heritage, yet the Khoi who occupied the Cape area are not included. Pairs of elephant and baboon heads, again designed by Mitford-Barberton and executed by Lorenzi and his brothers, decorate the 6th and 12th floor inner edges of the Darling Street façade respectively, while four “native masks” flank the 18th floor tower’s edges. These “masks” are an odd inclusion in the architectural program, for masquerades are not performed by any South African groups, nor do they occur in the other British colonies then part of Old Mutual’s purview--with the exception of a limited number in then-Tanganyika, which look nothing like those on the building.

The internal decorations include marble columns, white-veined onyx marble, gold leaf ceilings, distinctive door knobs, African animal etchings, paneled frescoes, and carved wooden friezes that feature African animals. Many of these elaborate elements illustrate the dedication to Art Deco throughout the building, but some rooms seem more traditional, meant to represent the values and stability of the company. The banking hall is lined with marble columns and has often been described as Neoclassical in style, stressing Old Mutual’s prevailing theme of tradition despite their Art Deco light fixtures. The capitals, however, follow no Classical order; they too are topped by metal rings that echo those of the lamps, suggesting a mere nod to Neoclassism via the fluting on the columns.

Old Mutual moved its headquarters to the Pinelands suburb not even two decades after the opening of the Mutual Building. By the 1990s, only a limited number of other commercial tenants used the building. In 2002, Old Mutual planned to mothball the structure due to white flight from the CBD, but Louis Karol Associates proposed to repurpose the structure into apartments in order to “seed” the district with new residents. They did so from 2003-05, with financing from Old Mutual Properties. Old Mutual retained ownership of the Director’s Suite and Assembly and Banking Halls, using the latter as an event venue, but finally divested them in 2015.

The building and its 180-plus units, now referred to as Mutual Heights, was one of the first conversions to jumpstart a residential return to downtown Cape Town, though some apartments were purchased as vacation rentals rather than primary homes. Much of the building has kept its original design and decorative elements without falling victim to over-renovation, winning Louis Karol Associates three refurbishment awards. Mutual Heights remains one of the most profound and aesthetically beautiful buildings in Cape Town, albeit with now-archaic colonialist visual declarations. Security anxieties led to the installation of a skywalk connecting tenants to an existing parking garage diagonally across an intersection. Concerns arose that residents might fortress themselves from the neighborhood, rather than resuscitate it.

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The Braamfontein Gate in Johannesburg's Braamfontein Business District is just one of the city’s many repurposed buildings. Built in 1976, it began as Total House, the South African headquarters for Total Elf Fina, the French-owned corporation that is one of six "super-oil" companies in the world. The steel and concrete skyscraper was designed in the Brutalist style, like the majority of buildings in this skyscraper-filled district. When the company moved to Rosebank, a suburb of Johannesburg, in 2011, it then served as headquarters for the UCS Group, as well as other commercial tenants, its name changing to the UCS Building and then to Lucs building. In 2014, a fire ruined the electrical system. The structure remained vacant for two years, when it was earmarked for conversion to middle-income residences.

Urban Task Force, a Johannesburg corporation that has been involved in urban renewal projects for over a decade—and also acts as landlord for numerous buildings--allocated a budget of R100 million ($7,268,402 USD) to Local Studio to complete the project. Trust for Urban Housing Finance (TUHF) also provided funding. Local Studio stated they envisioned a structure inspired by author and myth-specialist Joseph Campbell: "If you want to see what a society really believes in, look at what the biggest buildings on the horizon are dedicated to." They saw their efforts as contributing to the city’s direction “away from soulless capitalism.”

To keep costs low, many existing building elements were repurposed. Balconies made of chromadek panels and glass were added to each residential unit, and office layouts were restructured, as was the ground floor. Leasing began in August 2016, and, when completed, the building will have 410 units. In 2017, rents ranged from $305 USD for one-bedroom apartments to $458 USD for two bedrooms; executive apartments had monthly rents of $534 USD, and several penthouses were planned. The ground floor includes a coffee shop and juice bar, as well as a business center, playground, pool, fitness center and other amenities. Solar roof panels and a hot water heat pump system add newer technologies to the structure

The 30-floor building, the tallest in the Braamfontein district, has some of the best views in downtown Johannesburg. Pitched to a young, multi-ethnic demographic, it exemplifies efforts to lure citizens to areas that emptied out after post-apartheid white flight to the suburbs by both residents and corporations. The University of the Witwatersrand is located in Braamfontein, and student presence helps ensure a trendy neighborhood, further increased by an influx of young professionals and additional shops and restaurants. A three-minute walk to the Gautrain, the high-speed light rail that connects Johannesburg to the airport and Pretoria, also makes the building attractive.

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The French found the climate of Dakar did not always suit their colonial vision of a Beaux-Arts colony, although its Neoclassical and Second Empire architectural styles were key to assimilation. That policy’s design was intended to globally transform overseas territories with the homeland’s visual stamp. Some colonial buildings deteriorated due to humidity, termites caused numerous collapses, and building material importation proved expensive. After World War I, a shift in policy occurred. The French government observed that imported architectural styles alienated one culture from the other. In 1920, the minister of colonies advised his overseas administrators throughout the globe to look at vernacular architecture in order to integrate its motifs and forms into official buildings. Structures of the colonized were adapted, an act deliberately planned to win over subject peoples in what Moshé refers to as “rhetoric of pseudo-cooperation.” In Senegal, French designers found their inspiration in both Neo-Sudanese and Moroccan stylistic models, ignoring the local architecture of the Wolof, Serer, or Fulani. Neo-Sudanese forms from what is now Mali had already taken center stage in multiple international expositions held in France and other European sites from 1855-1931, and, during a brief period before World War II, that choice was also realized in a handful of buildings in Dakar’s Médina. Premier among them was the Polyclinique.  The Polyclinique, also known as the Institut d'Hygiène Social, was designed by Henry Adenot and built in 1932 as a health clinic for the Senegalese, located in the “native quarter,” the Médina. Its symmetrical design was patterned after Songhai mosques in what is now Mali, imitating their tapering vertical elements, a central entrance that juts out, and roofline projections (waterspouts replacing traditional wooden beams). Its zig-zag motifs occur on some regional houses but are not common mosque features. Reinforced concrete in an ochre color mimicked the sun-dried earth of the originals, obviating the need for annual repairs.  The clinic closed for a time in the 21st century due to deterioration as well as financial issues, but it has reopened as both a health center and exhibition space.

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In the 1860s, Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive or viceroy of Egypt, built two hunting lodges for himself and his many guests to use when they went hunting. Both were in the desert, less than half a mile from the pyramids of Giza. These hunting trips--though just over eleven miles from Cairo--required lengthy donkey travel, a boat to cross the Nile, and extensive detours around flooded areas. In 1869, when the Suez Canal opened, the Khedive expanded the lodge and built a road from Cairo to the Pyramids. When his Ottoman overlord deposed him in 1879 due to British and French pressure, one of the lodges was purchased by Frederick Head and his wife, who used it as a private home from 1883 and 1885. They added a second floor and renamed it Mena House, after the early Pharaoh Menes/Mena. When Head died, the lodge was sold to another wealthy English family, the Locke-Kings. They kept it as their private residence, but built a hotel next to it. As Humphreys observed, their locally-based English architect, Henri Favarger, created a façade whose irregular height and surfaces produced the effect of multiple buildings on a  medieval North African street. The Mena House Hotel opened officially in 1886 with 80 rooms, and was already finely decorated with pieces belonging to previous owners.

The Locke-Kings expanded the hotel even further, as did later owners. European embellishments were added—Egypt’s first swimming pool, billiard rooms, tennis courts, croquet lawns, race course, and a nine-hole golf course provided entertainment, while a post office and English church were additional conveniences. Nonetheless, efforts were made to preserve and continue the original Arab style. Its eclectic mix of Orientalism and English comfort provided tourists with an overwhelming sense of opulence against a backdrop reminder of four millennia of history. By 1900, despite its isolated location, it became the terminus of the Cairo electric trolley line and had itself secured electricity. Wealthy tourist visitors had pharaoh-like privileges. In a desert setting, forty acres of gardens with water features transported them to an artificial oasis. Camels might take them to picnic or observe archaeologists at their labors.  The Locke-Kings returned to Britain, leaving others to manage the hotel until they finally sold it in 1904 to the wealthy Cairo-based hotelier George Nungovich. He added a wing before Egyptian Hotels, Ltd. took over all his properties in 1925. The hotel was nationalized when Nasser came to power in 1952, and the original lodge was torn down to add another wing during that decade. Beginning in 1972, the government had the luxurious Oberoi hotel chain manage the property. Under its purview, further expansion took place, and the hotel grew to over 500 rooms. The Egyptian government’s state-owned tourism and hotel agency took back the hotel in 2013, and plans to have the Marriott Group run it, beginning in 2018. The hotel is still home to antique handcrafted furnishings, original works of art, and golden walls decorated in geometric patterns. Through the years, its guests have included British author Arthur Conan Doyle, American novelist William Faulkner, Napoleon III’s Empress Eugenie, deposed King George of Greece, and film stars such as Charlton Heston and Roger Moore. Mena House has also hosted several major strategic meetings. In 1943, it was cleared to house Chiang Kai-Shek, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill's Cairo Conference, a discussion about plans for Japan, Manchuria, and Korea’s futures once WWII ended. In 1977, it was the site of the preliminary peace discussions between Egypt and Israel that eventually led to the Camp David Accords. Beyond its history and Orientalist décor, Mena House’s setting is a reminder of tourism’s beginnings in Africa, and how wealth, power, and influence were able to claim a prime location and keep it in splendid isolation for exclusive guests.

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Lagos-based sculptor Aina Samuel constructed the Aare sculpture that was installed in 2016—just a year after HRM Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II became the Ooni of Ife. It stood in front of the palace on a small roundabout near the Oke-Mogun shrine, a sacred spot that is the focus of October’s Olojo Festival dedicated to Ogun, god of iron.

The sculpture represented the Aare, a specific beaded crown worn by the Ooni at his coronation and once annually during the festival. Its extensive, dark-toned blue and red “beading” contrasted with the surrounding features of then-nearby Afewonro Park. Its overall design was geometric, its triangles referring to the Yoruba cosmos. The colors were sectioned into three individual chromatic groups divided into sections of white, red, and black, although its cascading fringe was multicolored.

While conical beaded crowns are worn by the Ooni and other Yoruba monarchs (oba) who are descendants of Oduduwa, the first ruler of Ife, the Aare’s design differs from them in shape and decoration. Like an ordinary man’s dog-eared cloth cap (fila abeti-ajá), it has two flat curved-seamed sides. Some monarchs wear beaded versions as informal crowns; these can include a full or partial beaded veil that hides the individuality of the monarch and also protects the viewer from the medicine-empowered gaze of the oba, directing focus to the crown itself.

The Aare is more elaborate than these informal crowns, however. Its multi-colored beaded veil extends to the Ooni’s calves, and it includes several bead projections on a mica rondel, as well as parrot feathers, white okin feathers, and a group of bulbous elements at the nape. Unlike other Yoruba formal crowns (ade)—some of which the Ooni also owns—it lacks abstract beaded faces, birds, and interlace motifs.

Although the palace states the Aare crown dates to the time of Oduduwa, Ife’s legendary first king, its form and decoration differ substantially from the crowns that appear on terracottas and bronzes dating from the 11th–15th century. Except for the large carnelian (okun or lantana) beads sewn along the crown’s crest and protruding from its badge, today’s Aare is decorated with seed beads that were not available in Nigeria until the 19th century. Earlier crowns were made of large stone lantana from the Ilorin region or glass beads produced in Ife itself at the Olokun Grove, where crucibles were found, although they too bore a round badge (albeit with different details) at the front, absent from other Yoruba crowns.

The actual crown’s symbolic elements include the round badge made from mica, a material inserted in some of the pottery found in archaeological sites at Ife. The four beads that project from it represent an important number, critical to Ifa divination and its orisha, Orunmila; a further suggestion is that they represent the palace’s supports. The Aare’s red tail feathers from the African grey parrot are associated with prophecy and witchcraft, and signify the Ooni shares the powers of the witches but is superior to them and can serve as a supernatural protector.

One of the most important elements of the Aare is the hidden medicine within it. When worn by the Ooni, he incarnates Oduduwa, the first Yoruba ruler, as well as Ogun, whom the Olojo festival honors. Most of this medicine’s ingredients are secret, but Aare is said to be unusually heavy because it includes objects sacred to Ogun, including cutlasses and hoes. It also apparently includes a palm nut, referring to divination apparatus, and the bark of a tree (aginla or asorin) associated with the powers of witchcraft that represents the royal ancestors. The Ooni should never gaze upon the inside of his crown, lest he dies.

When he is laid to rest, his Aare is buried with him, although certain elements are removed and incorporated in his successor’s version. The crown itself is held to be a deity; sacrifices are made to it and it rests in its own palace chamber.

At some point after July 2018, the sculpture was removed from the roundabout. A large replica of the Aare, however, has been incorporated into the decorated stands erected for the Olojo festival from 2018 on.

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When the government of Western Nigeria established the University of Ife in 1961, the country was only a year old. When classes commenced the following year, Unife had the opportunity to proclaim the modernity of the young nation through its breadth of studies, as well as its appearance. The University controverted late colonial views concerning tertiary education. The Western Region had hosted the University of Ibadan since 1948, and by 1959 plans were underway for the North to construct Zaria’s Ahmadu Bello University and the Eastern Region to build the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The British had recommended Lagos as the next university site, but the Western Region decided they needed a second university outside the capital. They considered numerous potential cities, and their chosen architect, Arieh Sharon, suggested Ile-Ife should be selected. In 1960, Sharon and Nigerian planners toured universities in many parts of the world, considering design, planning features, and suitability of architecture to site. Levin suggests Sharon was particularly impacted not only by the schools he examined, but by the spatial arrangements of Maya centers in Mexico—tight, interconnected complexes surrounded by lush greenery, with several buildings conceptualized as inverted pyramids.

Arieh Sharon (1900-1984), a well-known Israeli architect, designed the university in 1961. A number of African institutions looked to Israel in the early years of independence, partially because it had rapidly created a progressive nation with original cultural attributes, and partially because its climate was closer to that of Africa than many European countries. Sharon had trained at the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s before moving to Tel Aviv where he created numerous government buildings, kibbutzim, and communities. He brought experience in designing for hot climates to Nigeria, as well as intimate familiarity with Modernism—the latter a way to reshape the image of Africa as a forward-moving continent. His OAU buildings varied in their dates of construction, but are made mainly from concrete, designed to accommodate the tropical climate and sun exposure, with ventilation provided through open hallways and stairways.

The Main Core is the pedestrian-only heart of the campus and features both administrative buildings and general student service spaces. Its composition was originally planned for the Secretariat, the Assembly Hall, the Hezekiah Oluwasanmi Library (named after OAU’s second vice-chancellor), and four Faculties--Humanities, Law, Administration, and Social Science. All were arranged around a green quadrangle and interconnected through paths, the uneven terrain necessitating terraces and ramps. Jutting rooflines and roofed walkways afforded protection from both sun and downpours in the rainy season. The Humanities buildings were erected between 1963 and 1965, their stark shapes resembling reversed pyramids. The strong horizontals of their cantilevers visually link them to the nearby library (1966). The Secretariat (1968) was designed to house the university administration and act as a student center; a non-objective sculpture acts as a gate to the Modernist structure. The Faculty of Education Building (1970) echoes the shape of the Humanities building with another upside-down pyramid design, but its proportions differ. Like many of Sharon’s Israeli structures, it is raised to promote air circulation below the building. The Assembly Hall (now Oduduwa Hall), constructed from 1972 to 1976, is the Core’s most flamboyant building. Designed with an adjacent amphitheatre, it has a dramatic shallow-steps approach from the plaza. The main building holds 1400, while the amphitheatre can house a larger audience of 3500. Its exterior includes organic forms in white against a darker concrete. While this pattern is not particularly Yoruba, it is pseudo-African in its abstraction, part of a limited intent to make the architecture site-specific. Other Sharon inclusions, such as the concrete column and striated surface treatments, are also intended as references to the ancient city that became the university’s home.

Sharon was also responsible for the early residence halls (1964), but construction did not cease with the completion of his work at OAU with his son Eldar Sharon, Harold Rubin, and AMY Ltd. Later University structures by other architects followed his Modernist lead. Notable additions include the Faculty of Health and Sciences building, which exemplifies repetitive rectilinear designs from neutral tones such as brown and ivory, and the locally-dubbed “Spider,” the Civil Engineering building.

One of University’s most notable buildings is its Natural History Museum. Its existence was first broached in 1971, but it was not finished and commissioned until 2011. Designed by architect Patrick Ehinmowo and his firm Platform Concept Ltd., it is one of the most adventurous and notable Modernist museum exteriors in West Africa. Its very geometric design emphasizes the triangular and pyramidal roofing, which recalls the upside-down pyramid designs of the Faculty of Education and Humanities buildings. The exterior’s neutral browns further tie it to Awolowo Hall and the Health and Sciences building, among others. The museum includes taxidermy specimens, 20,000 plants within a herbarium, and archaeological specimens from Ife.

Apart from its varied architecture, OAU’s landscaping keeps it from being a series of concrete islands. The buildings are integrated with the surrounding palm trees via numerous green spaces that surround the main structures. Concrete expanses are even broken up by small framed triangles of grass.

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In the heart of the Fez Medina is one of the largest mosques in Africa, as well what many consider the world’s oldest operating university. Al-Qarawiyyin (also known as Al Quaraouiyine or Al-Karaouine) was established in 859 C.E. by Fatima Al-Fihri, the daughter of a rich merchant. She and her family had migrated from the Tunisian city of Kairouan, about 1464 miles east of Fez. After her father died, Fatima and her sister Maryam inherited a large amount of money. Fatima decided to establish a place of religion and religious education, naming it after their hometown. Within two years,  her mosque and madrasa, or Islamic college, was finished. It became a place of political discussion and expanded to teach mathematics and the sciences. The original mosque was relatively small—just 98 feet long. In the 10^th century, it expanded considerably, its square-shaped minaret becoming a trend-setter.  The mosque’s appearance today was set in the 12^th century under the Almoravid dynasty, whose Moroccan-based empire extended to Spain and Portugal (al-Andulus): 21 aisles, muqarbas (the medieval Western Islamic equivalent of muqarnas) or honeycomb/stalactite/cell vaults, horseshoe arches, and inscriptions on the ijmiz, the rectangles that surround the arches. The muqarbas includes the Almoravid motif of an eight-petalled flower enclosed by an eight-point star within an octagon, just one aspect of the region’s fascination with geometric relationships. Two styles of calligraphy are present: complex floriated Kufic script and the new and still somewhat clumsy cursive style. This latter emulated the writing used in Baghdad, the caliphate the Almoravids venerated and from which they derived legitimacy, and was probably transmitted via the extensive correspondence exchanged between the polities. Additional changes in the mosque took place in subsequent centuries. The most significant took place in the courtyard. Its blue and white tile floor, marble ablutions fountain, and its two fountain pavilions, positioned like those of the Andalusian Alhambra’s late 14^th-century Court of the Lions, were added in the early 17^th century. The mosque’s exterior is unassuming, except for its tall minaret and its green-tiled roof, created as a series of gabled rows. The interior, however, includes intricate wooden, plaster, and marble carvings, as well as zellij tile decorations, helped create a heavenly shift from the busy markets that surrounded it, and the courtyard and its fountains alluded to paradise, as did water-filled features elsewhere in medieval Islamic states. Because Al-Qarawiyyin is in the Medina quarter of Fes, it is part of a World Heritage site, and must be maintained to keep its integrity.  In 2008, architect Mohammed Fikri Benabdallah completed the restoration of the mosque, an effort that culminated in his nomination for the 2010 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Sultans bestowed gifts upon the university, enabling the creation of a vast library that drew many students and scholars. The world’s oldest working library, its contents consist of four thousand manuscripts, including a 9^th-century Quran and an original copy of Ibn Khaldun’s influential 14^th-century Muqadimmah, a critical examination of history using political and economic viewpoints. In 2012, the library the Canadian-Moroccan architect Aziz Chaouni was awarded the project of renovating the library according to a four-year plan. When she first entered, the library was in disarray, with damage to the floors and even a fallen chandelier. What concerned her most was the state of the manuscripts. Chaouni created a humidity and temperature control room.  She also added a new gutter system to prevent further water damage to the building, as well as air conditioning and solar panels, and the library reopened in 2016. Even in the past, the attraction of both mosque and university outstripped Al-Qarawiyyin’s ability to accommodate students. Many other madrasa sprang up in its immediate vicinity, including the 13^th-century Saffarin madrasa (intended mostly for students from southern Morocco) and the 14^th-century Al-Attarine madrasa. Both had elaborately ornamented courtyards and public spaces, but plain, overcrowded student accommodations.  Al-Qarawiyyin still functions as mosque, library, and university, but UNESCO’s preservation of the Medina prevents physical expansion at the original site. Today the university has four other Moroccan campuses: Agadir covers Sharia law, as does a second location in Fez; Marrakech is the center for Arabic Language Studies; Tetuan houses the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy; and the original madrasa is the site of Islamic education.  

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The regal estate that fronts Devil’s Peak next to Table Mountain was home to British colonialist, politician and imperialist Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), whose belief in Anglo-Saxon supremacy led him to enact voting and property laws that helped steer South Africa towards apartheid. The Groote Schuur, Dutch for “Big Barn,” was first constructed as a Dutch East India Company granary in 1657, and passed into private hands in the 18th century. Rhodes then leased it, purchasing and renovating it in 1893, along with 1500 acres of surrounding mountains and land. Ever since, the Cape Dutch structure has been an exclusively governmental estate, used to house political officials during their years in office.  When Rhodes acquired the Groote Schuur, it was in a dilapidated state. Rhodes had amassed a fortune consolidating diamond concessions through the establishment of De Beers. He decided to rejuvenate the property and hired Sit Herbert Baker, an English architect who made many notable government structures in South Africa. The Groote Schuur underwent massive renovation and expansion to revamp its original Cape Dutch appearance while preserving its character. Baker invented a new vernacular, exaggerating some of the curving gables and marrying them to certain English features, such as barley sugar chimneys with their twisted appearance. Although a fire destroyed much of it in 1886, Baker rebuilt it to his first plan, abjuring thatched roofing for tiles. Its enlargement included an entirely new front façade and a large terraced back porch, as well as a new wing that contained a leisure room for billiards, a master bedroom with a great bay window, and a grand hall with a huge fireplace. Its interior also incorporated indigenous yellowwood and stinkwood. The home’s architectural elements are comprised of decorative gables, collonaded verandas, whitewashed walls, and teak woodwork, giving the structure the air of a country estate. A bronze relief by Scottish sculptor John Tweed stands over the front door, framed by Ionic columns. Although it represents Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival and the founding of his colony, it has also been read as Rhodes’s constructed foreshadowing of his own further development as an empire builder, van Riebeeck like John the Baptist to Rhode’s Christ. Rhodes also commissioned Baker to furnish the estate, and he filled the house with furniture, books, glassware, and other decorations from the Cape in a shift away from popular London-imported furnishings. Baker’s skill and interest in the Cape Dutch style inspired Rhodes to collect colonial furnishings and keep African elements a part of his interior decorating.  Furnishings include an expertly-crafted Egyptian writing table, an old Cape Town armoire with hidden drawers, an elephant-shaped drinking cup, and an enormous bathtub carved from a single formation of Paarl Mountain granite. The Groote Schuur’s interior remains almost entirely as it was in Rhodes’s day, which means that heads of state through much of the 20^th century lived in old-fashioned surroundings that underlined the enshrined past. The narrative was that of a kind of manifest destiny: that what Rhodes considered the “higher races” were fated to rule their inferiors. One of Rhodes' favorite symbols derived from Great Zimbabwe in what was then Rhodesia. Rhodes subscribed to the false narrative of the time—that its mortarless-stone structures had been built by non-Africans who had subjugated much of southern Africa in the distant past. He would have found the concept that the Shona had created the structure, since established by archaeologists, inconceivable. Rhodes had originally wanted to be buried at Great Zimbabwe, but settled for bringing part of it back to Groote Schuur. His bedroom, whose window looked out at the house’s Devil’s Mountain backdrop, still includes a glass front case filled with milk jugs, headrests, soapstone bowls, and other African objects. A stone bird sits at its top; this is one of the eight soapstone birds that stood at Great Zimbabwe, and was snatched by the hunter Willie Posselt, who had separated the bird (about 13 inches high) from its column, which was just under five feet tall. He sold it to Rhodes. A number of similar sculptures were taken from the site, but all have been returned to Zimbabwe except for the Groote Schuur example. The wooden staircase Baker built at the house features comer posts carved in its likeness, and Baker used its form for doorplates and several waterspouts still visibly protruding from the wall under parts of the building’s roofline. Rhodes also had it reproduced and aggrandized for the dome finials at Oxford University's Rhodes House, which Baker also designed, and its replicas stand on the staircase there as well. It acted as his personal emblem and remains incorporated in the Rhodes Trust logo. During Rhode’s occupation of the estate, he used it as much as a home as a political headquarters. He frequently opened his gates to the public and allowed them to play and picnic amid the flowers and foliage of the garden and grounds, where he demanded masses of colors. He kept a menagerie closer to the slopes near Devil’s Peak, where visitors were also welcome. In 1930, decades after Rhodes's death, the Groote Schuur Zoo was constructed, full of antelopes, zebra, wildebeest, and ostriches. It has been vacant since 1975.   In choosing the Cape Dutch style and even reverting to the property’s Dutch name, Rhodes gave a nod to the Afrikaaners who had lived in Cape Town before their Great Trek to Natal. Coetzer suggests that Rhodes’ promotion of Cape Dutch style—at first derided by the English who had taken possession of Cape Town—was the cornerstone of the creation of a fictional common white South African identity, devoid of the very real conflicts that took place between the English and the Boers before their 1910 union. A partner in Baker’s architectural firm wrote an 8-part series on Cape Dutch architecture in 1909, and the would-be architectural joint heritage took on symbolic significance. Cape Dutch Revival became popular in the Cape Town for several decades; first associated with the elite, then the middle class. Rhodes left his estate to the nation. From 1911 to 1994, the Groote Schuur was the official Cape residence to eleven members of the Prime Ministers of South Africa and then functioned as a presidential residence. P. W. Botha, Nelson Mandela, and subsequent heads of state declined to live there. It is now a museum, known as Rhodes Memorial, but is only open to the public by appointment, unless public charity events are scheduled. 

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A run-down structure standing on Ross Road once served as an important institution in Freetown’s history. Fourah Bay College’s original building, now a national monument, has evolved several times since its creation in 1845. The evolution of this iron-trimmed, four-story building made of laterite blocks in many ways represents Freetown’s own evolution. What began as Western effort of ideological expansion became a center of West African educational and societal advancement. The effects of the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1999 and a fire shortly afterward have left the building in poor condition. Today, it serves only as a reminder of its past cultural significance.

In 1827, the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) created a grammar school in Freetown known as The Christian Institution, then developed it into a training center for ministers. Its name changed to Fourah Bay College when this building’s 1845 construction began in the Clinetown neighborhood under the supervision of its first principal, by Rev. Edward Jones, an African-American from Charleston who graduated from Amherst College. Timber from slave ships was repurposed to form the building’s roof. In this way, the journey of the Liberated Africans was represented as a story of resilience and prosperity. Imported glass fashioned its many windows, including dormers on the top floor.

Its first student was Samuel Ajayi Crowther (ca. 1809-1891), a Nigerian-born Yoruba enslaved when he was about twelve, and rescued by the British Royal Navy’s West African Squadron for resettlement in Freetown. Fourah Bay emphasized Classical studies, and Crowther studied Greek and Latin, as well as Temne. He taught at the school for some time, then became a missionary in Nigeria, famed for his Yoruba translation of the Bible. His facility for languages led him to also create primers in Nupe and Igbo, and he became West Africa’s first Anglican bishop, completing a doctorate at Oxford University. Christian Cole, another Fourah Bay graduate, had already become Oxford’s first African graduate in 1876. He later became the first African lawyer practicing in the English court system. Numerous other Yoruba graduates of the school became prominent missionaries and education leaders in Nigeria.

CMS was responsible for the management and cultural metamorphosis of the Liberated Africans, freed West and Central Africans the British transported to the colony from their interceptions of other nations’ slave ships, once they had ended their own participation and began to suppress the slave trade.

CMS felt it imperative that the new British colony be founded on Christian morals and Western traditions and intended that Fourah Bay College should serve as a self-supporting Christian center, served by members of Sierra Leone’s own clergy. Fourah Bay College drew students from other colonies, including what are now the nations of Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria.

Eventually, Freetown developed into a stronger community as the Krio settlers—freedman of mixed African backgrounds who left British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, as well as London itself—and Liberated Africans began to intermingle. This growing sense of unity motivated CMS to advance further, and educational issues became a topic of discussion. Citizens desired a place of learning where one could obtain a full university degree. In 1874, Reverend Henry Seddall documented the impact of higher education on society. He stated that “educated Africans are beginning to long slip away from their European leading strings, and they are proving themselves perfectly capable of discharging all their duties as citizens, and as Christians without foreign aid.”

In 1876, the college became an affiliate of England’s University of Durham, and it remained the only West African tertiary educational institution until World War II. Those Freetown citizens who were former slaves or their descendants had entered a new class of educated elite.

Fourah Bay College’s legacy was significant throughout Anglophone West Africa, since many of its graduates established educational institutions in Nigeria and elsewhere. The British colonial government did not establish even an elementary school in Sierra Leone until 1908, so the CMS and other missionary efforts spoke to a cooperation between church and civic efforts for development.

During WWII, the university was temporarily relocated to S. B. Thomas Agricultural Academy outside Freetown, then was moved to former army barracks in the Mt. Aureol neighborhood of Freetown from 1945 until 1962, where its current buildings were constructed.

The university’s move away from Clinetown changed the original building’s function. In 1945, it became the Sierra Leone Railway Corporation’s headquarters, then in 1980 served as a Magistrate Court, falling out of use a decade later. During the Sierra Leonean civil war, it housed citizens displaced by the conflict.

Since 1999, it has remained a roofless ruin, although squatters made their home there, despite missing wooden floors and board windows. The Bunce Island Coalition, a group that proposes to restore that island’s slave fort, had wanted to use the building for a future museum about the slave trade, but has abandoned these plans.

Since 2012, the Sierra Leonean Office of the Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs has sought to have the building placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, but it remains on the “tentative list.” In late 2017, the Sierra Leonean Monuments and Relics Commission—which had remained moribund for some time after the civil war—cleaned the site, removing vines and other vegetation that were attacking the building’s surface. Unfortunately, they have returned and are actively destroying the structure. The laterite stone is breaking down due to chemical weathering because of heavy rainfall, high temperatures, high humidity, and the salty air from the nearby ocean.

Hope that restoration funding will be forthcoming remains alive.

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The Agostinho Neto Mausoleum is an obelisk-like concrete structure towering above the city of Luanda. It occupies the center of the Agostinho Neto Cultural Center, which takes up 4,633 square miles of Luanda, and serves as Neto's final resting place. Neto (1922-1979) served as Angola’s first president from 1975-1979 after Angola secured its independence from the Portuguese. He remained the leader of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in Angola's subsequent civil war, dying before long before its final end in 2002. A Portugal-trained physician, he was also known for his literary skills as a renowned poet. The tower was designed to reference Neto's poem "The Path of Stars", and is named after his book A Sacred Hope. 

Built in 2012, its Brutalist architecture is said to reference a spaceship, and Luandans referred to it as "Sputnik" in the 1990s while its construction remained unfinished. Angola's interest in socialist realism may be a byproduct of their past political alliances. The Soviet Union supported the MPLA party during Angola's civil war, Cuba sent soldiers to fight on their behalf, and North Korean military personnel were also involved. Certainly the "cult of personality" that has visually marked these three nations is recalled by the Neto monument.

Although the project was initially awarded to a Brazilian company, it was completed by Mansudae Overseas Project, the North Korean sculptural business that has built monuments in many parts of the continent. In March 2011, Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the North Korean Supreme People's Assembly, visited the monument, and the official state news agency claimed that North Korea was funding the structure. Grzelczyk estimates its cost as $40 million. Whether this was a gift of an exchange is uncertain; in 2015, the North Korean ambassador to Angola expressed interest in developing agribusiness in the Malanje region of Angola, military training exchange agreements led to suspicions of illicit arms, and, although oil-rich Angola denied trading aviation and rocket fuel to North Korea, international misgivings arose.

Angola's willingness to abide by United Nations' sanctions increased in late 2017, when over 150 Mansudae employees were "invited" to leave Angola. By January 2018, Angola had terminated all further contracts with Mansudae.

At over 393 feet, it is taller than both New York's Statue of Liberty and London's Big Ben belltower, dominating central Luanda's skyline. Located outside the downtown area, its site was formerly a residential neighborhood called Praia de Bispo, cleared in the 1990s for the monument's erection. Near both the Presidential Palace and the National Assembly, it conceptually ties both to Neto's legacy of anti-colonialism. The extensive grounds surrounding the monument include lawns and gardens, as well as reviewing bleachers. Statues decorate the grounds, including one of an elephant kneeling in the direction of Neto's tomb.

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The Cine Atlântico was the vision of Portuguese architects operating in the late colonial period. Uncertain of Angola's future as a result of independence movements that began to grow in the 1950s, the leadership of Portugal decided to attempt to solidify its hold by melding with local populations throughout its colonies, but "melding" was an arbitrary idea. Although the first movie house was built in the 1930s, for example, segregation remained the norm under Portuguese rule.

The Cine Atlântico--formerly named Cine Império--was built in 1963, a period when Angolans realized their transition to independence was not going to follow the smooth path of other African nations. The movie house followed the open-air cinema (cine esplanandas) design originated by Portuguese-born architect Francisco Castro Rodrigues,  a graduate of the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa. Rodrigues moved to Angola to escape the dictatorial regime of António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, becoming the city architect for Lobito, a coastal town in central Angola near Benguela. There he created the now-derelict Cine-Flamingo (1963) and the Cine-Baía. Rodrigues, taking into account the tropical environment and the tastes of Angola's wealthy population, created a structural type that was both opulent and functional. Unlike the drive-ins theaters, these had roofs and stage seating, an arrangement that was uncommon internationally.

The Cine Atlântico itself was commissioned by the film company Angola Filmes and designed beginning in 1963 by the architect António Ribeiro dos Santos with adjustments by the engineer Eduardo Paulino. Ribeiro dos Santos was also Portuguese-trained, The style of the Cine Atlântico melds Brazilian, Portuguese, and Angolan architectural elements, demonstrating strong influences from the Brazilian tropical architecture of Oscar Neimeyer, with its use of reinforced concrete and curvilinear forms. The geometric points of the supports, the circular stone mosaic pavement in front of the theater (a feature seen in both Brazil and Portugal) and the use of concrete provide a sense of belonging to the metropolitan Lusophone world, as well as the international stage, through the illusion of urban modernism.

Officially opening in 1966 with a showing of My Fair Lady, audiences were treated to garden views on both sides of the theater, the sights of the central district of the city, and breezes from the sea. Originally intended for a site on the Bay of Luanda, Cine Atlântico was instead built in the wealthy Villa Alice district. Catering to a rich clientele, the theater included paintings by Albano Neves e Sousa, a Cubist-influenced artist who grew up in Angola but attended the Escola de Belas Artes do Porto in northern Portugal, as well as sculptures by António Vidigal.

The theater is both a cinema and auditorium holding 1,489 seats. To create a theater that both had proper ventilation in the heat and protection from rain, Dos Santos and Paulino used concrete. They created a structure with open sides and an overhead canopy supported by steel suspension cables that surround the theater's roof. The grading of the three levels allows both light and air to travel through the center of the cinema.

Equipped with a restaurant and bar area, the cinema was meant for socializing and showing nighttime movies. It was also often used for rock music concerts until independence and was filled with youth. After Angola's civil war commenced in the 1970s, the theater saw a loss in attendance.

Today the theater still shows movies and additionally hosts packed cultural events and concerts. The Luanda International Film Festival is held at the cinema annually.

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Maboneng, its name a Sotho word meaning “place of light,” has been rapidly growing at about 3 times the rate of South Africa's standard of about +6% annually. Located in Johannesburg's Central Business District (CBD), the district was cut from a section known as Jeppestown, and is situated between two major streets, Commissioner and Marshall. It served as a beacon of hope for the once-abandoned eastern margin of Johannesburg's CBD, now breathing with new life.

It still holds many uncertainties, since it remains in the fairly new stages of development after a decade-plus. With a rising demand for trendy, urban property, the threat of exile for those who cannot afford to live under new pricing looms overhead, and the initial boom has been tempered by liquidated investments.

Like many South African cities, apartheid's end had led non-whites to leave their mandated neighborhoods and migrate into the cities themselves. In Johannesburg, the industrial neighborhoods were an affordable option, since they had declined in the 1970s. As they moved in, demographics shifted further. Many whites who were living near, working in, or investing in these industrial areas fled, along with their money. Economic failure resulted from the closing of industries, resulting in dilapidated structures and a general rise in crime.

Jonathan Liebmann, the entrepreneur who headed Propertuity Development Company (backed by Jonathan Beare) when he was still in his twenties, instigated Maboneng's revitalization efforts. He bought some empty buildings in 2008/09, revamped them, and rented out small-scale studio space artists such as William Kentridge and Mikhael Subotzky, as well to design firms. The artists' followers started gravitating towards their studios, generating cultural buzz. The district’s growth as an attraction led to activities such as Arts on Main and Market on Main—weekly food, shopping, and art sales held in and around the warehouses let to Maboneng's founding artists. Liebmann privately developed most of "Maboneng"--38+ structures.

Liebmann's plan was to create an artistic, entrepreneurial, and social incubator that would bring together a mix of people with differing ethnic, educational, and economic backgrounds. Providing varied kinds of spaces where they could interact and form new connections fit with a new idealism in the post-apartheid era.

However, stylish new architecture and even the choice of signage fonts created a divide with an exclusionary effect on those not part of the integrated middle and upper classes. The Africanization of the district's name suggests a cultural blessing even as physical appropriation of space grows. The illuminated sign that stamps the Precinct with that name stretches across Kruger Street. It acts as a beacon for photos, reinforcing the curated characterization of the neighborhood and its trendsetting goals.

Local artists took most of the creative control in transforming the district, much as they did in industrial areas of New York City, like SoHo, Chelsea, or DUMBO. Not only were old industrial buildings being renovated and used by artists, but their exteriors served as canvases for street art. All in all, this “culture-led” revitalization offered innovation, collaboration, and development efforts that may have very well sustained the cosmopolitan, visionary neighborhood of modern desire—for some.

The neighborhood's retail investments increased demand for new or repurposed structures. With its close proximity to transportation, Maboneng became a booming retail center, equipped with fashion boutiques, malls, and houseware shops. Increased international travel to Maboneng for shopping day trips by Zimbabweans, Malawians, and Zambians brings in new consumers.

Many small, private businesses operate in the district, such as OPEN, a “co-working space” unveiled in 2012. Set up like a café. many young entrepreneurs, investors, and artists can order a cup of coffee, work alone, hold meetings, or network with others in a collaborative space, a practice growing throughout the world. Cafes, restaurants, and crafts also find niches.

Maboneng's reputation as one of Johannesburg's hot spots was reinforced by its use as a setting for the 2015 limited series "aYeYe" about three young black creatives sharing a Maboneng loft while working at an advertising agency. Paradoxically, this may have been an unintentional death knoll for the district. As has happened in other art-transformed spaces worldwide, many of the artists who pioneered the area departed as prices increased and the "coolness factor" attracted the bourgeoisie.

Growth in Maboneng continued, including projects like the Museum of African Design, transformed by Propertuity from an auto panel beater's shop to a non-collecting museum in 2013. Besides exhibitions, it hosts fashion shows and other events and includes a maker space with workshops. The Bioscope cinema (now closed) and POPart Performing Art Centre (no longer hosting full-scale performances) also provided both destination spots and employment. Proximity to the university helped fuel activities relating to the arts.

Murals and graffiti have been a strategic element in the district's branding. Not only are they ubiquitous, they are the focus of several tours. These are, however, restricted to the core sections of Maboneng, rather than its grittier outskirts, still perceived as somewhat dangerous for the middle class. Those highlighted are mainly commissioned, rather than spontaneous paintings, with both corporate and local government sponsorship.

Not all of Maboneng's residences are luxurious spaces. Many impoverished families live in informal housing within still derelict warehouses where frying oil buckets serve as furniture and milk carton labels provide wallpaper that covers holes. Some “apartments” are as small as 7' x 7' and house an entire family. Up to 150 families in Maboneng are fighting the rising cost of living and attempting to keep eviction at bay as the demand for more space continues to rise.

The general neighborhood depended on a cash economy, which unfortunately correlated with a rise in crimes such as burglaries of businesses, carjackings, thefts from individuals, and corruption in rent charges, especially in the informal housing sector. Cash usage also complicated research relating to the socioeconomics of the neighborhood, since cash cannot be traced like bank card purchases. An inability to track consumer patterns may have kept planners from predicting which investments would be soundest, and also prevented avoidance of declines in growth and expenditures.

The lack of a coherent management and development policy continues to polarize the neighborhood instead of unifying it through an inclusive vision. An insufficiency of hotels hinders development, but Airbnb fills this gap, as do a few boutique hotels, some extensively decorated by artists. London-based architect Sir David Adjaye designed a retrofit of a former diamond polishing business, transforming it into a combination apartment house (where he holds or held a flat) and the small Hallmark House hotel.

Maboneng suffered a major blow only a decade after its birth. In 2016, RMH Property bought into developer Propertuity, holding a large percentage of the company. In 2018, Propertuity's founder Liebmann departed, and the following year, RMH decided to fold the company, liquidating many of its properties for much less than they had been valued.

While this contradicted assurances that complete neighborhood renovation would be possible, a six-block development within Maboneng called Jewel City opened in 2020. In a fortress-like space once occupied by diamond and gold dealers, demolition allowed new structures rather than rehabbed buildings. It includes 2200 apartments, as well as retail space, offices, and a school. A pedestrian passage encourages strollers, and new murals vie with a McDonald's sign. While the original development of the Maboneng Precinct explicitly excluded chain stores and franchises, the Jewel City aspect includes not only fast-food places but supermarkets and other amenities, albeit some with mural decorations.

While some of its original creators have departed, there is still hope that the “Place of Light’s” ever-growing vision will not be extinguished. The recent injection of more than $141.5 million suggests that revitalization efforts have not ended, even if the district's cutting edge has dulled.

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Near Abomey’s city center is Place Goho, a small park where a statue of Akhosu (King) Behanzin (r. 1889–1894) stands behind a fountain and rectangular pool. This massive monument depicts a muscular figure, his hand outstretched as if to indicate “stop.” The site is particularly poignant, for it is where Behanzin and Alfred Amédée Dodds, the Senegalese general who led the French army’s final assault, met for the Dahomean surrender in 1894, as well as where Dodds made his encampment after his conquest of Abomey and Behanzin’s exile. Fencing encloses the formally designed park, punctuated by colored medallions featuring the emblems of former rulers, as if they are witnesses to the end of independence.

Behanzin’s idealized representation is made from copper alloy and stands over 19.5’ tall (6 meters). While its face bears a general likeness to the oft-photographed monarch, its musculature (as well as that of the body generally) is over-emphasized, a trait common to the socialist realism of its North Korean sculptors. A creation of the North Korean state-run art operation Mansudae Art Studios, it is one of the factory’s many African memorials to national heroes who fought European colonial ambitions. Although numerous sources mistakenly attribute it to the 21st century, the statue was erected in 1979. Benin was a declared socialist state from 1974–1989, when some of its defensive forces were trained by North Korea, the decade when the Mansudae Art Studio began to move beyond Pyongyang to international locations. Place Goho itself was the very site of the revolutionary government’s declaration of Marxist-Leninist policies. The company’s collective nature–it employs over 1000 artists–and North Korean origin make it difficult to track down any information on the specific artists who worked on this project, but the company’s policy has been to use its own artists, engineers, and installers.

Behanzin is shown in his typical royal attire. He wears a toga-like hand-woven garment that leaves one shoulder bare, a “dog-eared” cloth cap, and sandals. Sandals are the most significant of the garments, as they were explicitly reserved for the Akhosu. Clenched in his right fist is the royal makpo (reçade in French), the scepter used since the kingdom’s first “official” Akhosu, Houegbadja (r. 1645–1685). The plinth that supports the statue bears an inscribed plaque, which (loosely translated) states: “I cannot accept any treaties that do not keep the land of my ancestors independent.”

Akhosu Behanzin was the eleventh king of Dahomey. When he first came to the throne, European attempts to colonize the continent were underway. They occupied the coastal town of Cotonou, and Behanzin immediately attacked them. Their modern weaponry forced him to withdraw. Two years later, Behanzin campaigned against two other coastal towns formerly part of Dahomey’s territory but part of France’s sphere of interest; France declared war. Behanzin favored diplomacy over the death of his people in battle even as the French demanded the kingdom’s surrender to French rule. Behanzin wrote many letters to the French commander, General Dodds, explaining that Dahomey would never give up its land. He even attempted to contact the president of France to explain the situation.

When it became apparent that reason and even gifts of gold and slaves could not sway the French, Behanzin took a stand. The French slowly battled their way inland against the ferocious albeit ill-equipped Fon. Steadily, they pushed the Fon back from the coast and into the capital city of Abomey. While remaining steadfast in his defense of his homeland, Behanzin never abandoned the hope for a diplomatic solution. After General Dodds and his government dismissed Behanzin’s pleas, he began corresponding with the German chancellor asking him beseech the president of France on Dahomey’s behalf, swearing to protect German traders and citizens in Abomey. The French were not persuaded and continued their attacks.

Behanzin knew the army that was marching into the capitol could easily overwhelm his exhausted remaining forces. He decided to burn the royal palaces so the French could not claim them and then fled to the north with the intention of making a final assault against the French. Guerilla warfare and small attacks against the French in Abomey occupied the next year. Due to word from his brother and former officer, Goutchili (regnal name Agoli-Agbo), he attempted a final meeting with the French and was captured. After his difficult four-year reign, Behanzin was exiled, first to Martinique, then to Algeria, dying in Algiers in 1906. The French had installed Agoli-Agbo as king but stripped all power from his position. This was a pivotal moment in Dahomean history and it was undoubtedly the death of the nation’s independence. The Fon still regard Behanzin as not only a great king but a national hero for his resistance efforts. His body was repatriated in 1928.

Behanzin’s giant statue honors the monarch who spent his whole reign attempting to stop colonialization efforts. Its naturalism is in stark contrast to the life-size wooden sculpture created in his lifetime by local artist and royal family member Sosa Dede or to the Houeglo family of artists. It takes the unusual form of an anthropomorphized shark in an equally rare depiction of aggressive action. This work was a royal bocio, a power object activated and reinforced by mystical medicine. When such works were transported to the battlefield, they were believed to exert positive effects on the outcome. The shark was one of Behanzin’s emblems and referred to a “strong name” assigned to him by divination. His motto was “The angry shark will terrorize its enemies,” and he is remembered as saying, “Gbo ouele fandan agbedui brou,” or “the daring shark has troubled the sandbar,” referring to the French who had to cross a sandbar at Cotonou.

This wooden sculpture may soon join its larger “twin” in Benin Republic. Although it has been in Paris since Dodds’ success (presently at the Musée du Quai Branly), the 2018 panel assembled by French President Emmanuel Macron concluded it should be among the first African objects to be repatriated to its home country. In 2020, this became a bill passed into law, with 2021 the target year. Midway through the year, this had not yet occurred.

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Innovative and culturally significant approaches to civic planning among Sotho-speaking peoples can be traced back to the 14th-16th centuries when the predecessors of South Sotho-speakers first arrived in the present-day Republic of South Africa and Kingdom of Lesotho. While the earliest structures themselves no longer exist, archaeologists have studied the remains of former settlements to gain an understanding of social organization and the significance of the built environment as an expression of identity. As Huffman explains, these early settlements follow the general layout of what is described as the "Central Cattle Pattern." Such settlements feature a central cattle corral (lesaka) with a surrounding residential zone.

Based on the remaining evidence, scholars have determined that domestic structures in these settlement types likely consisted of domed structures made of thatch (so-called "beehive huts") or circular pole-and-daga (a mixture of dung and mud) walls with a thatched roof. The archaeological remains of these settlements are thought to be related to cultural affiliation and are largely found in regions where Eastern Bantu-speaking peoples resided. It is significant that Sotho-speaking peoples organized their built environments with a livestock corral, or lesaka, as a central feature, not only to provide shelter and protection, but also as a spatial expression of local belief systems. This space, along with the judicial court, or khotla, was historically reserved for men, as was the livestock itself and any related materials such as skin, horn, and bone.

The symbolic value of such materials is significant, especially considering the connection between the male sex and cattle in South Sotho belief systems. For example, livestock essentially serve as a spiritual link with one’s familial ancestors, or balimo, as cattle were the basis of one's wealth, and were used as a trade commodity before the arrival of a cash economy. This wealth was typically passed down from father to son, thus linking newer generations with the old, resulting in the literal provision by one's ancestors to surviving kin. In addition, males of status were often buried in the wall of the lesaka, further strengthening the link between the male sex, cattle, wealth, and spirituality.

Even today, cows are the preferred sacrificial animal used for celebrating and communing with one's ancestors through feasts and other practices, and almost every part of the animal has value and significance. In addition, cattle play a major role in marriage agreements, and are not only used for paying bohali, or brideprice, and thus tightening familial bonds, but to maintain other roles in the bringing together of two families. For example, it was often regarded as a show of largesse for the groom's family to present a cow to the bride's family when visiting her homestead for the first time. It was also deemed a sign of respect to gift the mother of the bride a dairy cow, acknowledging her having breastfed the bride-to-be. Furthermore, an ox was historically slaughtered during the marriage feast and given only to the parents of the bride and groom. This was done in accordance with strict social guidelines regarding the distribution of food in South Sotho society where certain parts of the animal are consumed by specific individuals, based on one’s age, gender, and status.

Cattle also played a significant role in other facets of the life cycle, further emphasizing their centrality within South Sotho society. For example, upon the death of an individual, a cow was slaughtered as part of the cleansing process, and its skin was wrapped around the body of the deceased in order to prepare it for the afterlife. Furthermore, when males undergo lebollo, or initiation into adulthood, a bull is slaughtered, and one thigh given to the initiates. The ngaka, or herbalist, who oversees many of the necessary practices and procedures during this process, is given the remaining part of the bull as payment for his services and expertise.

In addition, cattle by-products also hold special significance among South Sotho-speaking cultures. For example, oxtails were used to make strings for sewing brooms and baskets, skins produced clothing, stringing beads relied on sinew, and horns were transformed into snuff bottles. Thus, the centrality of the lesaka, both physically and conceptually, played a significant historical role in the built environments of South Sotho-speaking populations and is still a central element in many contemporary communities in spite of changes in structures, materials, and civic planning.

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