Fort d'Estrées

The Historical Museum of Senegal in Gorée (French: Musée historique du Sénégal à Gorée) is a museum attached to the Institut fondamental d'Afrique noire (IFAN) and located on the island of Gorée, in the bay of Dakar, Senegal. The museum is dedicated to showing and commemorating the different stages of Senegal's history from ancient times to the country's independence.

The fort was built between 1852 and 1856, the fortification has an area of 1900m2, it was built for the purpose of defending the Dakar harbour. The fort is named in honor of vice-admiral Jean II d'Estrées, in which he regained control of the island from the Dutch in 1677. The person in charge of the construction of the fort was Emile Pinet-Laparde, he was one of the persons responsible for the French colonial administration of Dakar, in which he was sent to Senegal in 1849. After the Second World War, the fort became a prison and disciplinary center reserved for certain prisoners of the Dakar prison. In 1977, the government of Senegal closed the prison and handed over ownership of the building to the Institut fondamental d'Afrique noire.

The work of renovation and transformation of the fort to create the museum was initiated by the Belgian anthropologist Guy Thilmans, these renovations took more than a decade. The renovation work was financed by public authorities and private funds, including the Ford Foundation, UNESCO in addition to the French and Saudi Arabian embassies. The decision to create the museum in the fort was due to the fact that the previous IFAN museum was too small, therefore, at the request of the director of the institute, Amar Samb, it was decided to establish a new museum there to replace the previous one, the restoration works were supervised by the Bureau d'Architecture des Monuments Historiques.

On March 3, 1989, the renovations were completed and the museum was inaugurated. According to Abdouyale Ly, the first director of the museum, the objective with the opening of this museum is to promote the West African culture.

In this fort is located the historical museum of Senegal, this museum contains various artifacts dating from the stone age on the history of the country.

Text adapted from “Historical Museum of Senegal in Gorée” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fort d'Estrées ranks #7,075 of 8,764 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking. Founded 1852, it is older than 8% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 655 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. See how Senegal compares in the castle statistics.

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