EXPLORE THE ISLAND

Less than 2 miles from the coast of Dakar, the beauty of Senegal’s Gorée Island betrays its brutal history as one of the busiest ports in the entire African slave trade. As many as 20 million enslaved Africans boarded slave ships through Gorée’s infamous "Point of No Return" on their way to the Americas between the mid-1500s and the mid-1800s.

The Maison Des Eclaves, or "Slave House" was a place of great cruelty and violence. Men, women and children were imprisoned under themost inhumane circumstances, crowded into damp, dark, filthy cells for months at a time.

THE ISLAND AND ITS PEOPLE