TiP: Historical Sites Of Ghana.... So captivating!

As said earlier, TIP ventures presents a 7days cultural and historical tour to Ghana. This trip comes up in d second week of December 2013 and it promises to be an informative, educating and absolutely entertaining journey. You are going to visit some interesting sites, and I am going to be giving you an idea of what it looks like... As an old Naija adage says.. "Seeing is believing" Lol

One of the historic sites of Ghana that you are going to visit is Cape Coast Castle.

Cape Coast Castle

The Cape Coast Castle

This is one of the biggest of the trade and slave castles on the coastline of Ghana. It has one of the country's best-organized museums today. It is a historical museum.

Cape Coast Castle is one of a number of "slave castles", fortifications in Ghana built by Swedish traders, originally for trade in timber and gold, later used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They were used to hold slaves before they were loaded onto ships and traded in the Americas and the Caribbean. This “gate of no return” was the last stop before crossing the great Atlantic Ocean.

Cell where slaves were imprisoned

Inside the dungeon of Cape Coast Castle, where hundreds of slaves were held in cramped conditions before being transferred to boats bound for the western hemisphere.

Trade history

The large quantity of gold dust found in Ghana was what primarily attracted Europe, and many natives of Cape Coast used this to their advantage. In exchange for gold, mahogany, their own people and other local items, the natives received clothing, blankets, spices, sugar, silk and many other items. The castle at Cape Coast was a market where these transactions took place. At the time slaves were a valuable commodity in the Caribbean and the Americas, and slaves became the principal item traded in Cape Coast. Due to this, many changes were made to Cape Coast Castle. One of the alterations was the addition of large underground dungeons that could hold as many as a thousand slaves awaiting export. Many European nations flocked to Cape Coast in order to get a foothold in the slave trade. Business was very competitive and this led to conflict. This is the reason why the castle at Cape Coast changed hands many times during the course of its commercial history.

Cannons and balls used to secure the Slave house

Recommendations:

For those visiting Ghana there is nothing more powerful than visiting Cape Coast Castle and embarking

on a tour that brings to light the historical atrocities of the slave trade. As you tour the grounds and see

the beauty that surrounds it, understanding the human atrocities that went on in the dungeons below,the castle is emotionally difficult to understand. ~Borderless travels