Conakry

About Conakry

Conakry runs out to sea along the narrow Kaloum Peninsula, a 36-kilometre finger of land on Guinea's Atlantic coast, with the green Îles de Los floating just offshore. The city began on little Tombo Island at the peninsula's tip, ceded by Britain to France in 1887, and became the capital of French Guinea in 1904. At independence in 1958 it had fewer than 80,000 people; today more than three million live here.

The old administrative heart of Kaloum holds the Palais du Peuple, the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie and the Monument du 22 Novembre 1970, which recalls the seaborne attack the city repelled that year. Further along the peninsula rise the white minarets of the Grand Mosque, one of the largest in Africa, beside the mausoleum where national heroes are buried, while the Sandervalia National Museum keeps masks and statues from every region of Guinea.

Conakry is busy, humid and very wet in the rainy season, but rewarding: bargain in the vast Madina market, then escape by boat to the beaches and forests of the islands.