Cape Coast Castle is one of about forty “slave castles,” or large commercial forts, built on the Gold Coast of West Africa (now Ghana) by European traders. It was originally a Portuguese trading post, established in the 1650s, which they named Cabo Corso. By the 1660s, the castle had shifted into Danish, Dutch, and later English possession. In the castle’s early decades, trade revolved around gold, wood, and textiles, before English merchants began seeking captive Africans in large numbers.
The Castle has been visited by many celebrities, dignitaries, world leaders, and individuals who have walked through the dungeons and courtyard of this historical site. When President Obama visited Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle in July 2009, he remarked that “it reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil.”
Go on a comprehensive guided tour of this castle, where you can learn about and see how it served as a prison and embarkation point for enslaved Africans en route to the Americas (the Caribbean, South America, and the U.S.). Thousands of enslaved Africans from regions near and far, sometimes hundreds of miles away, were taken to these castles and passed through the “Door of No Return” to be sold to slave ships.
These are other trips.