Accra Guided City Tour, A Cultural and Historical Experience

Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and Mausoleum

The Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park stands on the former Old Polo Grounds in central Accra, the very place where Ghana's independence from Britain was proclaimed on 6 March 1957. Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from colonial rule, and the park, opened in 1992, honours the country's first president, whose remains rest here with those of his wife. The mausoleum, clad in marble and shaped to recall an upturned sword, rises above reflecting pools and fountains.

On this Accra city tour you spend time walking the gardens, seeing the statues and visiting the small museum with photographs and personal objects from the independence years. Your guide explains why this site matters so much to Ghanaians and to the wider Pan-African movement. Many visitors ask whether the Nkrumah Memorial Park is worth visiting: for anyone curious about modern African history, it is one of the most meaningful stops in the city.

W.E.B. Du Bois Centre

In the quiet, leafy district of Cantonments, the W.E.B. Du Bois Centre occupies the former residence of the African-American scholar and civil rights campaigner who moved to Ghana in 1961 and died in Accra in 1963. He is buried in the grounds, next to the house where he spent his last years working on an encyclopedia of the African world. The centre was opened in 1985 as a memorial and research library dedicated to Pan-Africanism.

Inside, you see his study, his books, photographs and personal belongings, and your guide tells the story of how his ideas about African unity linked the diaspora with the newly independent nations of the continent. The peaceful garden is a calm contrast to the busy roads of the capital, and the visit gives useful context for the independence story you hear later in the day. Allow around forty minutes here.

National Museum of Ghana

Founded in 1957, the year of independence, the National Museum of Ghana is the country's oldest and largest museum and the best introduction to the many peoples and traditions of Ghana. Its galleries bring together archaeology, ethnography and art: royal stools and regalia, kente cloth, gold weights used by Akan traders, masks, drums and objects that tell how Ghanaians lived, traded and celebrated over the centuries.

Your guide helps you read the displays and connects them with what you see later in the markets and craft stalls of Accra. It is the right stop to understand the role of chiefs and symbols such as the Adinkra signs that appear on fabrics all over the city. Please remember that touching the exhibits is not allowed. If you only have one day in Accra, a visit here combined with the memorial park gives you the essential background to the country.

Makola Market and the Accra Arts Centre

Makola Market is the beating heart of central Accra: a dense maze of stalls and lanes where traders, many of them women who have run their businesses for decades, sell wax-print fabrics, beads, spices, smoked fish, fruit, vegetables, shoes and household goods. It is loud, colourful and full of life, and walking through it with a local guide is the easiest way to experience daily life in Ghana's capital without feeling lost.

A short drive away, the Accra Arts Centre, officially the Centre for National Culture, gathers artisans and traders selling carvings, paintings, kente and batik cloth, glass beads, leather goods and djembe drums. This is the place in Accra to shop for authentic souvenirs, and your guide can explain how pieces are made and what fair bargaining looks like. Bring some cash in Ghana cedis for small purchases, and ask before photographing traders.

Black Star Square and the Jamestown Lighthouse

Black Star Square, also known as Independence Square, was built in 1961 beside the Atlantic and is one of the largest public squares in the world. It hosts Ghana's national parades on Independence Day, and its two landmarks, the Black Star Gate crowned with the black star of the national flag and the white Independence Arch, are the classic photo stops of any Accra sightseeing tour. Your guide explains the symbolism of the star and of the flag's colours.

The tour also passes the red-and-white Jamestown Lighthouse, standing above one of Accra's oldest neighbourhoods and its busy fishing harbour. Jamestown grew around a British fort built in the seventeenth century, at a time when the coast was part of the Atlantic slave trade, and your guide presents this history factually and with respect. From here you return to your hotel in the afternoon with a clear picture of Accra's past and present.