Heritage & Culture

Some experts call this the greatest center of plant biodiversity in the archipelago. It is also where the water is, which is the same story.

Gorée is on the World Heritage list for one reason only: what happened there. The criteria line says so, and it is the whole argument.

Three of Senegal's living traditions are inscribed by UNESCO, and one of them is a meal. Culture here is practiced, not displayed.

The national dish is inscribed by UNESCO, and the amount of care that goes into your bowl is a measure of how welcome you have been made.

Two hundred and eighteen mounds of shells, some hundreds of meters long, heaped up by people eating from the same water for centuries.

Most World Heritage properties are listed under two or three criteria. Gorée carries one, and that single line is the whole argument.

Over a thousand stone circles stand along a single river, built across more than fifteen centuries by a society we know mainly from its graves.

Three peoples, three landscapes, and a settlement pattern eight centuries old that is still lived in rather than preserved.

It was the capital of Senegal for eighty-five years, the capital of French West Africa before that, and the birthplace of the national dish.

UNESCO inscribed Djerba for a settlement pattern built by communities of different faiths, and names the synagogue and the churches among its parts.

Tunisia is Arab, Amazigh and Mediterranean at once, and its craft traditions are inscribed heritage rather than souvenir production.

Tunisian cooking is the spiciest in the Maghreb and harissa is the reason. Both the paste and the couscous around it are inscribed by UNESCO.