Cape Coast Castle

The dungeons and the Door of No Return

A white fort on the Ghanaian shore with dungeons cut into the rock underneath it. The Portuguese put a trading post called Cabo Corso here in 1555, the Swedish Africa Company built a timber fort in 1653 and named it Carolusborg, and it passed Swedish to Danish to Dutch to English as Europeans fought each other for the trade. The vaults below could hold a thousand people at once, let down through an opening made for the purpose, and they were kept there in the dark until they were walked out through the doorway onto the boats. That doorway is the Door of No Return. UNESCO listed it in 1979 with the other forts and castles of the Ghanaian coast, as testimony to the Atlantic gold and slave trades. Go, and take the guide.