Abidjan calls itself the Perle des Lagunes, and the nickname is geographically exact: the city sprawls across a string of peninsulas and islands cut through by the Ébrié Lagoon, with the Atlantic Ocean just to the south. Around six million people live in the metropolitan area, which makes Abidjan the third-largest francophone city in the world after Kinshasa and Paris. The downtown skyline of skyscrapers is unique in West Africa; for decades the city has been called the “Manhattan of Africa” and the comparison is genuinely apt, especially seen from a pirogue crossing the lagoon at sunset.
The historic heart is Le Plateau, the small downtown island where the banks, ministries and the great modernist cathedral of St Paul stand. The cathedral, designed by Italian architect Aldo Spirito and consecrated in 1985, is one of Africa’s most striking pieces of religious architecture: a vast white shell tied by steel cables to a 132-metre stylised figure of St Paul that doubles as the bell tower. Inside, light pours through stained glass by Italian artist Marcello Avenali, telling the story of the Ivorian church. Entry is free; weekday mornings are quiet and unforgettable.
South of Plateau, across the Houphouët-Boigny Bridge, lies Treichville—the lively, working-class quarter where Ivorian music was born. The Marché de Treichville is the largest covered market in Abidjan: four floors of fabrics, pagnes, beauty products, smoked fish and Senufo wood-carvings. By night, Treichville and neighbouring Marcory are the home of the maquis, the open-air grilled-fish-and-cold-beer restaurants that define Ivorian nightlife. A plate of grilled tilapia, attiéké and braised plantain in a maquis costs around $6.2; a large bottle of Flag or Bock beer about $2.7. Coupé-décalé, the high-tempo dance music that swept West Africa from the early 2000s onwards, was invented in Abidjan; nightclubs in Marcory and Zone 4 still play it loud until dawn.
North of Plateau, across the lagoon again, Cocody is the leafy upscale district of embassies, the University of Félix Houphouët-Boigny and the legendary Hôtel Ivoire, with its 25 floors and its skating rink (yes, in Abidjan). Adjamé, between Plateau and Cocody, is the chaotic transit hub: the gbaka and woro-woro minibus stations that connect Abidjan with the rest of the country, and the famous Adjamé market where you can buy almost anything. For green air in the middle of the metropolis, Banco National Park—a 30 km² protected rainforest with rare primates, butterflies and the world’s largest open-air laundry along its river—sits just north of the city centre. Entry is around $3.6.
Eating in Abidjan is the gentle and addictive part of any visit. The national starch is attiéké—steamed, fermented cassava granules that look like couscous—eaten with grilled fish, fried plantain (alloko) and a fiery pepper sauce. Garba, the late-night street favourite, is attiéké served with deep-fried tuna and chilli, wrapped in newspaper for around $1.8. Kedjenou, a slow-cooked chicken or guinea-fowl stew sealed in a clay pot and steamed over charcoal, is the dish to order at a sit-down restaurant. And on the drinks side, bandji—palm wine tapped from the local raffia palm—is the traditional refresher, often sold in plastic bottles at roadside stalls outside the city.
Three hours’ drive north of Abidjan, on the open savannah of the Baóulé country, sits Yamoussoukro—a town of about 350,000 people that became the country’s political capital in 1983. It is the birthplace of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first president of independent Côte d’Ivoire (1960–1993), who decided to move the capital to his ancestral village and spent the latter part of his presidency turning it into a monumental city of broad boulevards, fountains, ministerial palaces and a presidential complex protected by a moat full of sacred crocodiles. The crocodiles are still fed every afternoon around 17:00 at the lake just below the Houphouët-Boigny Foundation; the spectacle is free, slightly surreal, and unmistakably Ivorian.
The reason most foreign visitors come to Yamoussoukro is the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace (Basilique Notre-Dame de la Paix), which Houphouët-Boigny personally commissioned and personally paid for between 1985 and 1989. Inaugurated by Pope John Paul II in September 1990, it is the largest Christian church in the world by Guinness measurement—30,000 square metres of floor area, 158 metres tall to the top of the cross, with a dome modelled directly on St Peter’s in Rome and built slightly taller. The architect, Lebanese-Ivorian Pierre Fakhoury, used 7,000 cubic metres of imported Italian marble and the largest stained-glass ensemble ever made, fabricated in Saint-Gobain in France. The interior seats 7,000 people, with standing room for 11,000 more on the surrounding esplanade.
The scale is genuinely difficult to absorb. The colonnade alone—128 monumental columns in twin curves—was directly inspired by Bernini’s arms reaching out from St Peter’s Square. Walking from the main nave to the apse takes a few minutes; the dome rises so high that the eye keeps lifting. One of the stained-glass panels depicts Houphouët-Boigny himself, kneeling before Christ on the road to Emmaus. The basilica is open daily from 06:30 to 18:00; entry is free, modest dress is required (shoulders and knees covered), and an English- or French-speaking guide can be hired at the gate for around $8.9. There are usually no crowds and rarely more than a handful of foreign visitors at a time.
A few other Yamoussoukro sights are worth the time. The vast Saint-Augustin Seminary, built at the same time as the basilica, sits just behind it and trains the next generation of Ivorian priests. The Houphouët-Boigny Foundation hosts the country’s African studies library and a museum of the first president’s personal collection. The Hotel President, an enormous round tower built in 1979 for foreign dignitaries and recently reopened after renovation, has Africa’s longest indoor swimming pool and a panoramic rooftop with a sweeping view of the basilica and the savannah beyond. Rooms start around $142 a night.
Getting to Yamoussoukro from Abidjan is straightforward. The UTB and SBTA coach companies run comfortable air-conditioned buses several times a day from the Adjamé bus station; the trip takes about three hours and tickets cost around $11. A shared taxi (sept-place) is a little faster but tighter. The road, the famous Autoroute du Nord, is a four-lane motorway in good condition and is one of the best roads in West Africa.
A forty-minute drive east of Abidjan along the coast, past the swampy mangroves of the Ébrié Lagoon, the road delivers you to Grand-Bassam—the first French colonial capital of Côte d’Ivoire (from 1893 to 1900) and, since 2012, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The historic Quartier France is the reason. A few dozen French colonial buildings of the late nineteenth century, raised on wooden pilings against floods, line streets that lead down to a long Atlantic beach. The buildings—the old governor’s palace (now the National Costume Museum), the customs house, the cathedral, the post office, several former trading firms—have been gently restored and painted in fading ochre, pale yellow and forest green. The atmosphere is half ghost town, half open-air museum.
The town has two sides. The Quartier France, on the small peninsula between the lagoon and the sea, is the heritage zone. Across a wooden bridge sits the Quartier N’zima, the African village whose inhabitants are the historic Akan-N’zima people who have lived here for centuries. The N’zima are still presided over by a king, whose modest palace is open to respectful visitors. Every year in late October or early November, the N’zima celebrate Abissa, the week-long ritual of cleansing and renewal—dancing, drumming, the symbolic crowning of a temporary “king of mockery” who can publicly criticise the real chief without consequence. It is one of the great festivals of West Africa.
The beach at Grand-Bassam, lined with palm trees and small open-air bars, is the closest weekend escape for Abidjan’s middle class. The Atlantic swell here can be powerful and the undertow strong—swim with caution and never alone—but the long stretch of pale sand is one of the most beautiful in the country. La Madrague Hotel, a French-run beachfront property, serves the best seafood platter on this stretch of coast for around $27. Entry to the National Costume Museum is around $3.6.
Continue another hour east and the road reaches Assinie, the seaside resort of choice for Abidjan’s elite and for visiting French, Lebanese and Ivorian celebrities. The 1990s film Les Bronzés with Christian Clavier and Gérard Jugnot was filmed here, and the place still has a slightly retro French Riviera feel. The beaches around the Aby Lagoon are excellent for surfing, kite-surfing and stand-up paddle; the surf school Atlantique Surf gives lessons for around $36 for two hours. Most of the better hotels (Boblin La Mer, La Maison d’Akwaba, Bayfield) sit on the narrow strip of sand between the lagoon and the ocean and are reached by a small ferry. The road from Abidjan to Assinie is in good condition; the drive takes around 90 minutes outside rush hour.
A footnote for cocoa-curious visitors. Côte d’Ivoire produces around 40 per cent of the world’s cocoa—more than any other country—and the inland forests on the way to Assinie and further east pass through plantation country. Several small operators around Aboisso and Adzopé run half-day plantation visits that include cocoa-pod opening, fermentation pits and a chocolate-tasting; ask at your Abidjan hotel for the latest contacts. The Yamoussoukro-based association Ivoire Cacao also runs occasional bean-to-bar tours.
Beyond the Yamoussoukro savannah, Côte d’Ivoire opens into a far less-visited country of forested mountains in the west and rolling Sudano-Sahelian savannah in the north. The western highland town of Man, eight hours from Abidjan, sits in a basin ringed by eighteen granite peaks—hence its nickname la cité aux dix-huit montagnes. The Dent de Man (881 m, the “Tooth of Man”) and Mont Tonkoui (1,189 m, the highest peak in the country) are both classic half-day climbs with views deep into Liberia and Guinea. The region’s real curiosity is the ponts de lianes—handwoven liana bridges suspended over rivers, replaced periodically by elders following secret techniques passed down through generations. The bridge at Lieupleu, a 30-minute drive from Man, is the most famous; a small contribution of around $3.6 to the village is customary.
Man and the surrounding Dan country are also one of the great mask-making regions of Africa. The masques Dan, with their distinctive almond-shaped eyes and serene closed mouths, were a key influence on Picasso and the Cubists. The Goli and Gle masked dances, performed at funerals and harvest ceremonies, are not tourist shows—they happen on the village calendar and respectful visitors can attend if invited. Several guesthouses in Man, including L’Auberge and Hôtel Les Cascades, can arrange visits to nearby villages with local guides who know which ceremonies are open to foreigners.
In the north, the Senufo cultural capital of Korhogo (population around 280,000, eight hours from Abidjan) is the gateway to a completely different country. The Senufo are master farmers, sculptors and metalworkers, and the area around Korhogo is dotted with villages specialising in particular crafts: Fakaha for the famous toiles de Korhogo, the cotton fabrics hand-painted with mud and natural dyes in geometric and animal motifs; Niofoin for sacred forest carvings; and Kong, a 14th-century Islamic trading town with a beautiful Sudano-Sahelian mud mosque. A guided day-trip from Korhogo to Fakaha and Niofoin costs around $71 including transport and a local guide.
In the far northeast, Comoé National Park—a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest protected area in West Africa at 11,500 square kilometres—is slowly recovering from decades of poaching and is open again to small-scale tourism. Elephants, buffalo, hippopotamus, several monkey species and the African golden cat are all present; the rangers’ camp at Kafolo on the Comoé River has basic but clean rooms and arranges 4x4 and walking safaris. Access is difficult and rewards only patient travellers, but it remains one of the most genuinely wild places in West Africa. In the far southwest, the smaller but biologically extraordinary Taï National Park (UNESCO 1982) protects the last large block of primary rainforest in West Africa, including chimpanzees observed and filmed using stone tools to crack open nuts—one of the most famous primatology sites in the world.
A handful of practical notes. Côte d’Ivoire uses the West African CFA franc (XOF), pegged to the euro at a fixed rate of $1.2 = 1 euro. Most nationalities, including EU, UK, US and Canadian citizens, need an e-Visa, applied for in advance through the official portal snedai.com; the process takes a few days and a single-entry e-Visa costs the equivalent of around $89. Yellow fever vaccination is mandatory and checked on arrival at Abidjan airport. The dry season runs roughly November to March; the rains return in May, with a short break in August and a second wet spell in September and October. French is universally spoken in cities; in the markets and the countryside, Dioula is the most useful second language. Tap water is not safe to drink—buy bottled or use a filter. And finally: this is the home country of Didier Drogba and the African football champions of 2024. Wear something orange.