When it was built
Construction dates vary between accounts. The most common reading is that work began around 1750 and the fort was completed around 1770. Pages giving a single "built in" year are usually quoting one end of that span.
Header Photo - at Richter Fort Osu,Accra
Ghana-Net.com · Western Region · Jomoro · Nzema coast
The last European fort before Côte d'Ivoire, on a beach almost nobody reaches by accident. British-built, handed to the Dutch, handed back — and now the one place on the whole coast that tells the story of the Nzema rather than the Europeans who came to trade with them.
Follow the forts west from Accra and they thin out. After Princes Town and Axim the coast turns flat, the palms get denser, and the road runs further inland. Then, at Beyin, there is one more: a white, square fort on the sand, facing an open sea with nothing but lagoons and beach between it and the border.
This is Fort Apollonia, the westernmost of Ghana's forts. It takes its name from Cape Apollonia, which Portuguese sailors are said to have sighted on the feast of Saint Apollonia, 9 February. The name stuck to the whole coast — Europeans called the Nzema country "Apollonia" for three centuries.
Why come this far? Two reasons, and neither is the fort alone. It is the only fort in Ghana that has been turned into a museum about the local people rather than the trade. And Beyin is the starting point for Nzulezu, the village built on stilts in the middle of the Amansuri wetland. Together they are worth the drive.
Fort Apollonia is late, as forts on this coast go — built when the Atlantic trade in people was at its height, and abandoned within two generations.
The British Royal African Company and its successor built it in the second half of the eighteenth century, to hold the far western end of the Gold Coast against the Dutch and the French and to trade with the Nzema, who controlled the gold and the routes inland. Work is usually dated from around 1750 to completion around 1770. It was built to trade in gold, ivory and people — like every other fort on this shore.
After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, forts like this lost their reason to exist. Apollonia was abandoned around 1820, reoccupied, and left to decay.
In 1868 Britain and the Netherlands swapped forts to tidy up their borders: the British took the Dutch posts east of Elmina, and the Dutch took the British posts in the west. Apollonia became Dutch and was renamed Fort Willem III. The Nzema had not been consulted, and the handover was contested locally.
It lasted four years. In 1872 the Dutch sold everything they still held on the Gold Coast to Britain, and the fort changed flags for the last time.
Forts were rented, not owned. As at Groß Friedrichsburg, the Europeans here depended on agreements with local rulers and paid for the privilege. Swaps and sales between European powers did not change who actually controlled the land around the walls — which is why transfers like 1868 caused trouble.
Most forts in Ghana are presented as European buildings with an African tragedy inside. Apollonia was restored to do something different.
After years of decay, the fort was restored and reopened around 2010 as a museum of Nzema culture and history. Instead of company ledgers and cannon, the rooms are about the people of this coast: their chieftaincy, their trade, their festivals and their language.
The Nzema are the people of the far southwest of Ghana, living on both sides of the border with Côte d'Ivoire. Their best-known festival is Kundum, the harvest festival they share with the Ahanta. The best-known Nzema of all was Kwame Nkrumah, born at Nkroful, not far inland from here — where his mausoleum still stands.
Ghana has a museum or monument about European trade at almost every fort. It has very few about the coastal peoples those forts depended on. That is why this one matters more than its size suggests. For the wider picture, see Culture & Traditions of Ghana.
Fort Apollonia is thinly documented online, and much of what exists is copied from one page to the next. Three points are worth setting out.
Construction dates vary between accounts. The most common reading is that work began around 1750 and the fort was completed around 1770. Pages giving a single "built in" year are usually quoting one end of that span.
Some accounts mention earlier Swedish or Dutch trading lodges on this stretch of coast. They were small, short-lived and poorly recorded, and none of them is the building standing today.
Reports on whether the fort and its guest rooms are open differ, and several are years out of date. This page does not repeat any of them as fact. Telephone the Museums and Monuments Board before you travel.
West on the main road towards Elubo and the Côte d'Ivoire border, then down to the coast. Beyin is roughly 120 kilometres from Takoradi — allow two and a half to three hours, more in the rains or on market days.
Trotro from Takoradi towards Elubo or Half Assini, and get off at the junction for Beyin, then a shared taxi to the village. Leave early: transport thins out in the afternoon and you do not want to be stuck at a junction after dark.
Nzulezu, the stilt village, starts from the visitor point in Beyin itself — a canoe trip through the Amansuri wetland. Nkroful and Fort St Anthony at Axim are on the way back east.
Beach lodges along the Nzema coast, or Axim if you want more choice. Options across the region on ghanahotels.biz; flights into the country on ghanaflights.info.
Base yourself in Sekondi-Takoradi, the regional capital, or better, stay a night on the Nzema coast. This is a full day from Takoradi and makes no sense at all as a day trip from Accra.
Check before travelling. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, 2 Barnes Road, Adabraka, Accra: +233 302 221633 or +233 302 221635.
No tour we know of goes to Beyin — for this fort you arrange your own transport. The castle tours below cover Cape Coast and Elmina, and work well as the first leg of a trip that carries on west.
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The far west has fewer forts than the central coast, but each of them has a story the guidebooks skip.
A whole village built on stilts over the water, reached by canoe from Beyin. Homes, a school and a church stand above the lake. The best reason to come this far west.
Nkrumah's birthplace and first burial place, on the way between Beyin and Axim. See also Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
The second Portuguese fort on this coast after Elmina, on a rocky headland at Axim. Taken by the Dutch in 1642. On the way back east from Beyin.
The only German fort in Ghana, still standing — and the one an Ahanta ruler, John Conny, held against the Dutch for seven years after Prussia sold it.
Above the fishing harbour at Dixcove, and one of the strangest stories on this coast — leased to a British private individual in the 2000s, prompting a dispute about who can hold a World Heritage site.
Where the Dutch signed a treaty with the Ahanta in 1656 that held until 1872 — one of the longest-standing agreements between a European power and an African state anywhere.
All of them, in order: Forts and Castles of Ghana — the complete directory, fort by fort, with a dedicated site for almost every one. Beaches along this coast: Western Region Beaches and Beaches of Ghana. Lighthouses: Western Region Lighthouses.
If you only have time for Cape Coast and Elmina, do not come here. But if you are travelling the Western Region properly, Beyin is where the coast ends and the most rewarding day on it begins: a fort that tells you about the people rather than the traders, and a village on stilts an hour away by canoe.
Phone ahead, start early, bring cash, and stay the night if you can. The long road is the reason almost nobody comes — and the reason it is still worth it.
Verified: 26 September 2026. Construction dates follow standard reference accounts of the Gold Coast forts and are given as a range because the sources differ. The 1868 Anglo-Dutch exchange and the 1872 transfer to Britain are well documented. The museum conversion is dated to around 2010. Current opening arrangements and the status of the guest rooms are not stated here because published reports conflict; check before you travel. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.