Benin

Benin's principal cathedral and the seat of the Archbishop of Porto-Novo, a red-brick Franco-Brazilian basilican church completed in 1909 that dominates the main square of the capital and whose construction history reflects Porto-Novo's role as a node in the Atlantic trade networks that linked Dahomey to Brazil and Europe.

A lake village of 20,000 Tofinu people built entirely on stilts above Lake Nokoué near Cotonou, approached by dugout canoe and experienced as a dense horizontal city of bamboo and palm thatch rising from the water.

A shallow 780-square-kilometre lake on the coastal plain of southwestern Benin, fringed by mangroves and bordered by fishing villages whose pirogue fleets and smoked-fish trade have defined the local economy for centuries.

Benin's premier safari park and only UNESCO-listed wildlife reserve, covering 4,800 square kilometres of Sudan-Guinea savanna at the northern edge of the country, hosting populations of West African lions, elephants, hippos and buffalo accessible by 4x4 game drive.

A monumental arch at the edge of the Atlantic in Ouidah marking the point where enslaved Africans were forced onto ships bound for the Americas — the symbolic threshold between the kingdom of Dahomey and the Middle Passage.

Two restored royal palaces on a raised mud-brick platform in Abomey, once capital of the Dahomey Kingdom, with bas-relief narratives of King Glélé's animal神通 and the founding myths of the kingdom carved into the compound walls.