Ghana

The oldest mosque in Ghana and one of the oldest in West Africa, traditionally dated to 1421, built in the Sudano-Sahelian earthen style with mud walls, protruding timber beams, two pyramidal towers, and twelve conical buttresses. Housing an ancient Qur'an believed by villagers to have been sent from heaven, it serves as a center of pilgrimage for Muslims in northern Ghana.

UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List (Trade Pilgrimage Routes of North-Western Ghana, 2000)Làng Larabanga, cách Damongo khoảng 15 km về phía bắc (bắc tây bắc), cách cổng Vườn quốc gia Mole khoảng 4 km về phía nam, huyện West Gonja, vùng Savannah

Photo: Dieu-Donné Gameli, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The metropolitan cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Accra standing along Castle Road in the Adabraka district of Ghana's capital, commissioned by pioneering Divine Word Missionary Bishop Joseph Oliver Bowers and consecrated in 1957 at the dawn of Ghanaian independence, celebrated as a masterpiece of Tropical Modernist ecclesiastical architecture with its soaring steep-pitched roof, freestanding bell tower, West African mahogany woodwork, and historic papal visit by Pope John Paul II on May 8, 1980.

Metropolitan Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Accra, National Monument of Tropical Modernist Architecture in Ghana, and Papal Pilgrimage Site of Pope John Paul II (May 8, 1980)Castle Road, Adabraka (near Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and Liberation Road), Accra, Greater Accra Region, Republic of Ghana

Photo: Amuzujoe, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The monumental 15,000-capacity National Mosque of Ghana (Al-Furqan Mosque) rising on a 40-acre site along the Kanda Highway in central Accra as the second-largest mosque complex in West Africa, constructed between 2012 and its solemn inauguration on July 16, 2021 in classical sixteenth-century Ottoman Imperial style inspired by Istanbul's Sultan Ahmed Mosque and Edirne's Selimiye Mosque, featuring a 33-meter central dome, four 65-meter pencil minarets, Carrara marble courtyards, Iznik-style tilework, and the official headquarters of the National Chief Imam of Ghana, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu.

National Congregational Mosque of the Republic of Ghana, Second-Largest Mosque Complex in West Africa, and Official Seat of the National Chief Imam of GhanaKanda Highway (near Ring Road East and Nima), Kanda District, Accra, Greater Accra Region, Republic of Ghana

Photo: Warmglow, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

A UNESCO World Heritage serial property (inscribed in 1980, Ref. 35) comprising the ten last surviving traditional shrine houses (Abosomfie, 'houses of the gods and ancestors') of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ashanti Empire in villages northeast and south of Kumasi (anchored by the Besease Shrine near Ejisu), built around open rectangular courtyards with four steep-roofed wattle-and-daub rooms whose polished red-laterite plinths and white kaolin-washed upper walls are sculpted in intricate bas-relief Adinkra cosmological symbols for the veneration of the Supreme Creator Nyame, the Abosom tutelary deities, and the Nsamanfo royal ancestors.

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Inscribed 1980, Ref. 35, Criterion V) and National Heritage Monument of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB)Besease Shrine Village (near Ejisu) and nine associated heritage villages (Patakro, Abirim, Asawase, Bodwease, Ejisu, Kentinkrono, Kenyase, Bosomtwe, and Saaman) around Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Republic of Ghana

Photo: Rappmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi and a Papal Minor Basilica crowning the historic ridge of Roman Hill in the Adum district of Kumasi, capital of Ghana's Ashanti Region: built between 1927 and 1931 under the pioneering leadership of Bishop Hubert Joseph Paulissen of the Society of African Missions (SMA), visited by Pope John Paul II in May 1980, elevated to a Minor Basilica on June 10, 2004, and celebrated across Africa as the foremost center of Ashanti Catholic liturgical inculturation under Emeritus Archbishop Peter Kwasi Sarpong.

Papal Minor Basilica (Elevated by Pope John Paul II on June 10, 2004) and Metropolitan Cathedral of the Archdiocese of KumasiRoman Hill, Adum District (overlooking Kejetia Central Market), Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Republic of Ghana

Photo: Noahalorwu, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons