| Duration: | 1 Day(s) - 0 Night(s) |
| Tour Category: | Full Day Tours |
Visit Of Museums Porto-Novo
Porto-Novo, this old historic city on the edge of the Ouémé, is the capital of Benin. This name comes from the Portuguese colonists. Porto-Novo is home to an Ethnographic Museum, the former Governor's Palace and the Royal Palace, officially known as the Honmè Museum, which was once the palace of the Kings Toffa, who first established the links between Benin and France. Like Cotonou, it is full of many markets including that of Ouando which now supplants the large market of Porto-Novo.
Departure from Cotonou for Porto-Novo, where the visit will begin with the fresco on the Négrière Da Silva Museum Trafficking. The Da Silva Museum rises on the beginnings of our Capital (PortoNovo), with a typical architecture of the remains that it carries within it.
The visit continues with the entrance to the Honmè museum where the tourist will discover the history of the kingdom of porto novo and this day will be closed by the visit of the heritage house and the songhaï center.
Explore More About Porto Novo:
Situated on an inlet of the Gulf of Guinea, in the southeastern portion of the country, the city was originally developed as a port for the transatlantic slave trade led by the Portuguese Empire. It is Benin's second-largest city, and although it is the official capital, where the national legislature sits, the larger city of Cotonou is the seat of government, where most of the government buildings are situated and government departments operate.
Porto-Novo was once a tributary of the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, which had offered it protection from the neighboring Fon, who were expanding their influence and power in the region. The Yoruba community in Porto-Novo today remains one of the two ethnicities aboriginal to the city. The city was originally called Ajashe by the Yorubas, and Hogbonu by the Gun.
Although historically the original inhabitants of the area were Yoruba speaking, there seems to have been a wave of migration from the region of Allada further west in the 1600s, which brought Te-Agbalin (or Te Agdanlin) and his group to the region of Ajashe in 1688. This new group brought with them their own language and settled among the original Yoruba. It would appear that each ethnic group has since maintained its ethnic identities without one group being linguistically assimilated into the other.
