Elmina Castle

Description

Elmina Castle is a castles in Ghana, Africa. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board — St. George's Castle, Elmina gives its chronology as “The Portuguese founded St. George's Castle at Elmina in 1482; the surviving complex also incorporates substantial later rebuilding.” Ghana Museums and Monuments Board — St. George's Castle, Elmina also records: “A strategic coastal position. The castle occupies a narrow promontory between the Atlantic and the Benya River, beside a naturally sheltered harbour.”

Elmina Castle stands on a narrow promontory between the Atlantic Ocean and the Benya River in Ghana. Founded by the Portuguese in 1482 as São Jorge da Mina, it controlled access to the region's gold trade. Its commanding coastal position and sheltered harbour explain why European powers competed to hold it. The castle's white exterior must not obscure its history of enslavement. Under Portuguese and later Dutch control, the trading stronghold became part of the Atlantic system that treated human beings as commodities. Its history belongs as much to the people imprisoned and displaced through that system as to the powers that built and occupied its walls. The Dutch captured Elmina in 1637 and rebuilt parts of the castle between 1770 and 1775. It remained a centre of Dutch Gold Coast administration until its transfer to Britain in 1872. These successive alterations mean the building visible today is not an unchanged survival of 1482. Now a historical museum and part of Ghana's UNESCO-listed forts and castles, Elmina should be read as both military architecture and a place of remembrance. Fort St. Jago, on a nearby hill, is a separate monument and must not be confused with this castle in photographs or 3D reconstructions.