Accra · Forts and Castles
The Five Forts of Accra: A Coastline Nobody Walks
Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, English and Ga-built — five fortifications stand within a few kilometres of Accra’s shoreline, and one more out at Teshie. Almost nobody visits all of them. No tour offers it. Yet you can cross four centuries of the Gold Coast on foot in an afternoon, if you know where to look and what to expect when you get there.
On this page
Why nobody does this walk
Ask any Accra tour operator for a forts itinerary and you will be offered Cape Coast and Elmina, three hours west along the coast. That is not laziness — those two are UNESCO-inscribed, properly staffed, with trained guides and a fixed entrance fee. They are also, for a visiting operator, a full day that fills a vehicle.
Accra’s own forts pay nobody. There is no commission in a locked Portuguese lodge on a Jamestown side street. So they are skipped, and because they are skipped they are not maintained, and because they are not maintained they are skipped. That circle has been turning for decades.
Which leaves something genuinely unusual sitting in plain sight: a stretch of urban coastline holding fortifications built by four European powers who were, for most of that period, actively at war with one another over this precise piece of shore. They are within walking distance. Most are free. And you will very likely have them entirely to yourself.
Cape Coast tells you what the trade became. Accra tells you how crowded the competition for it was.
1. James Fort, Jamestown
James Fort
Also Fort James · Jamestown, Ga MashieThe English answer to the Dutch position at Ussher Town, sitting on the headland at Jamestown and giving the whole quarter its name. For most of living memory it was not a monument at all but a working prison, which is why older residents of Ga Mashie speak about it differently from the way a guidebook does.
It is the most rewarding of the five to combine with the surrounding neighbourhood. Jamestown is not a heritage precinct; it is a dense, functioning fishing community with its own life, and the fort makes far more sense seen as part of it than as a standalone site. The lighthouse is minutes away and the two are usually done together.
2. Fort Visao / Franklin Lodge
Fort Visao
Also Franklin Lodge · Jamestown, AccraThe oldest European foothold at Accra and the least known of the five, to the point that a good many Ghanaians who grew up in the city have never heard of it. The Portuguese came first everywhere on this coast — Elmina in 1482 set the pattern — and Visao is Accra’s piece of that story.
Do not expect a site. Expect a building, in a street, that you will need to identify for yourself or with local help. That it survives at all, in a city that has demolished a great deal more recent than this, is the reason to go and look.
3. Ussher Fort, Ussher Town
Ussher Fort
Originally Fort Crevecoeur · Ussher Town, AccraThe Dutch position, and the reason James Fort exists where it does. Two European powers built two forts within sight of one another because neither would concede the anchorage — and the Ga people whose land it was dealt with both, played them against each other, and are the reason the old town is divided into Ussher Town and Jamestown to this day.
Like James Fort it spent much of the twentieth century as a prison. Political detainees were held here. That layer of history is more recent, less comfortable, and considerably less well interpreted than the colonial one.
4. Richters Fort, Osu
Richters Fort
Also Richters House · Osu, AccraThe one that changes the shape of the story, and the reason we would put this walk above a Cape Coast day trip for anyone who has already done Cape Coast.
Richters was not built by a European chartered company. It was built and run by Ga brothers, and it operated in the same trade as the buildings around it. Ghana’s heritage presentation is generally comfortable with European perpetrators and African victims, because that account is true and simple. Richters is true and not simple, which is precisely why it is barely interpreted and rarely visited.
If you are travelling from the diaspora and you want the honest version rather than the manageable one, this building is the reason to come to Osu.
5. Osu Castle (Christiansborg)
Osu Castle
Christiansborg · Osu, AccraThe largest and most significant of the group, and the one carrying the heaviest modern weight. A Danish fortification that held enslaved people in its cells, extended and rebuilt repeatedly, which then served as the seat of government of independent Ghana from Nkrumah onward.
Every Ghanaian president until the move to Jubilee House worked in a building constructed for the slave trade. That fact, more than any exhibit, is what the visit is for.
Access has opened and closed over the years as the building’s official status changed. Confirm current arrangements rather than turning up hopefully.
6. Fort Augustaborg, Teshie — the hard one
Fort Augustaborg, Teshie
Also Fort Teshie · east of AccraTeshie’s Danish fort completes the picture of the Accra coastline and is the sixth piece of the set. It is also the one we would tell you to think carefully about.
Reaching it is not straightforward. It is not signposted in any useful way, the approach runs through dense residential streets where a stranger with a camera attracts entirely reasonable questions, and you will need someone local who knows both the route and the people along it. This is not a security warning so much as a courtesy one: you are walking through a neighbourhood, not a heritage zone.
On the way you will pass the ruins of a destroyed chief’s palace. Nobody will interpret it for you and it appears on no map of things to see. Ask your guide about it; the answer will tell you more about contemporary Ga politics than about the eighteenth century.
Our advice: do Teshie as a separate outing on a separate day, with a Teshie guide arranged in advance. Do not tack it onto the end of the five-fort walk when you are hot, tired and running out of daylight.
Doing it as a walk
The five city forts fall into two clusters — Ga Mashie in the west, Osu in the east — with a taxi ride between them. Half a day at a sensible pace, a full day if you want time in Jamestown itself.
Begin at James Fort with the lighthouse, then work through the old town to Fort Visao and on to Ussher Fort. Early morning is cooler and Jamestown is at its most alive when the boats are in.
Not for safety. For access, for permission, and because a community guide earns from your visit while an outside operator does not. Ask at the lighthouse or through a Jamestown-based community organisation.
Do not attempt to walk between the clusters along the shore. Take a taxi or ride-hail and agree the fare first.
Richters first while you still have energy for the harder conversation, then the Castle. End there.
Separate trip, local guide, arranged in advance.
Practical, all five. Closed shoes, water, hat, small notes for entry and for guides. Ask before photographing people anywhere in Ga Mashie or Teshie. Expect at least one of the five to be locked on the day you go — that is normal, not bad luck. And do not climb on ruined structures; several of these buildings are in genuinely poor repair and nobody is coming quickly if you fall.
What is actually bookable
No operator currently sells the five-fort Accra walk — we have looked. What is bookable is Jamestown and Accra city walking tours, which cover James Fort and the lighthouse well, and Cape Coast and Elmina day trips, which are the properly interpreted UNESCO sites three hours west. Both are worth doing, and both are a reasonable starting point before you attempt the rest of the Accra forts independently.
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The verdict
If you have one day and have never seen a slave fort, go to Cape Coast and Elmina. They are properly presented, properly guided, and they will affect you.
If you have already done that, or if you have several days in Accra, do this walk instead. Five forts, four European powers and one Ga family enterprise, inside a few kilometres of a working African capital — with no crowds, no coaches and no script. Take a local guide, expect at least one locked gate, and understand that the neglect you will see is part of the story rather than an interruption to it.
The five forts in detail
Verified: 22 August 2026.
Fort attributions, builders and later uses are as set out on the individual fort pages of this site, compiled from Ghana Museums and Monuments Board records, UNESCO documentation for the Forts and Castles of Ghana inscription, and Danish, Dutch, Portuguese and British colonial records. Access conditions are as observed on visits and reported locally; these change frequently and without notice, and no opening arrangement stated here should be relied upon without checking on the day. Route timings assume walking pace in daytime heat. This page reflects first-hand visits over more than two decades; where a building’s condition has deteriorated since our last visit, we would be glad to be told.