Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, Black Star Square and Historic Jamestown

A four-kilometre coastal corridor along High Street and Cleland Road holds the defining story of modern Ghana. Walking west from the ceremonial parade ground of Black Star Square past the mausoleum of Kwame Nkrumah into the seventeen-century alleys of Jamestown (Ga Mashie) takes you from the triumph of pan-African independence to the oldest quarter of the capital.

Black Star Square and Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park

Start early in the morning before the sun gets high at Black Star Square (Independence Square), commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah in 1961 beside the Gulf of Guinea surf. At the centre of the vast parade plaza stands the Black Star Gate, crowned by the black five-pointed star of African freedom inscribed with the year AD 1957; attendants on site frequently allow visitors to climb the internal stairs to the roof platform below the star. Across the coastal road stand the Independence Arch and the Eternal Flame of African Liberation. Ten minutes west along High Street sits the extensively refurbished Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, set on the exact former British polo grounds where Nkrumah declared that Ghana was free forever. Follow the avenue of bronze horn-blowing statues and fountains to the towering marble mausoleum (shaped like upside-down swords, a symbol of peace in Akan culture), then tour the museum's archival photographs, Nkrumah's white Cadillac and the tranquil Freedom Hall.

Walking through Ussher Fort, Brazil House and Jamestown

Continuing west past Rawlings Park brings you into Ga Mashie (Old Accra), historically divided into Dutch Accra (Usshertown) and British Accra (Jamestown):

• Ussher Fort and Brazil House: step inside the whitewashed 1649 Dutch bastion of Ussher Fort (which houses a museum on slavery and resistance and once held Kwame Nkrumah as a political prisoner), then visit nearby nineteenth-century Brazil House, built by Afro-Brazilian returnees (the Tabom community) who settled in Accra in the 1830s.
• Jamestown Lighthouse, Boxing Gyms and Fishing Harbour: walk past painted colonial stone facades, family shrines and open-air courtyard boxing clubs (Jamestown has produced multiple world boxing champions) to the 28-metre red-and-white Jamestown Lighthouse and look down over hundreds of carved wooden canoes in the Jamestown fishing harbour. Pair this morning walk with the neighbouring Arts Centre or Makola Market on Day 1 of our Accra itinerary.