The Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove

A dying grove rebuilt by an Austrian artist who was initiated into it

A century ago every Yoruba town had a sacred grove at its edge. Most have since been cleared or have shrunk to fragments, but Osun-Osogbo, on the banks of the Osun River just outside Osogbo, the capital of Osun State in south-western Nigeria, about 250 km from Lagos, is the largest to survive and is still revered. Its dense forest is among the last remnants of primary high forest in southern Nigeria, and the river that winds through it is the home of Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility. Set in the trees are forty shrines, sculptures and artworks to Osun and other deities, two palaces, five sacred places and nine worship points along the riverbank, each with its own priests and priestesses. The grove is also a living pharmacy of more than 400 plant species, over 200 of them known for medicinal uses.

Its founding story is a bargain. A band of migrants fleeing famine, led by the great hunter Olutimehin, settled by the river. The goddess rose from the water, asked Olutimehin to lead his people to the place that became Osogbo, and promised them protection and prosperity in return for a sacrifice every year. That sacrifice is still made.

In the 1950s the grove was nearly lost. As old sanctions weakened, shrines were neglected, priests left, and people fished, hunted and felled trees where it had been forbidden. An Austrian, Susanne Wenger, who lived from 1915 to 2009, helped turn it around with the backing of the Ataoja, the king of Osogbo, and local people. She founded the New Sacred Art movement to fight off land speculators and poachers, protect the shrines and bring the place back to life, and she came to be honoured with the title Adunni Olorisha. Many of the grove's sculptures were made by the movement in the decades that followed, which gives Osogbo a large body of 20th-century sacred art found in no other grove. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 2005, and it has become a symbol of identity for Yoruba people at home and across the diaspora.

Every August, Osogbo celebrates the Osun-Osogbo Festival, a tradition believed to be more than 700 years old. The town is ritually cleansed, a 500-year-old sixteen-point lamp is lit, and the crowns of past Ataojas are brought out for blessing. Then, to drumming, dancing and praise poetry, the sitting king leads a great procession into the grove behind the Arugba, a young woman of royal lineage who carries the calabash of offerings to the goddess.