HOUSE OF SLAVES | The Gorée Museum Where Thousands Of Black Slaves Were Held & Tortured In The 19th Century

Gorée is a tiny, car-free island off the coast of Dakar, in Senegal. It’s known for its role in the 15th- to 19th-century Atlantic slave trade.

On the narrow streets, colonial buildings include the House of Slaves, now a museum. The 19th-century Fort d’Estrées houses the IFAN Historical Museum, with exhibits on Senegal’s past.

The House of Slaves (Maison des Esclaves) and its Door of No Return is a museum and memorial to the Atlantic slave trade on Gorée Island, 3 km off the coast of the city of Dakar, Senegal.

The museum, which was opened in 1962 and curated by Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye until his death in 2009. It is said to memorialise the final exit point of the slaves from Africa.

While historians differ on how many African slaves were actually held in this building, as well as the relative importance of Gorée Island as a point on the Atlantic slave trade, visitors from Africa, Europe, and the Americas continue to make it an important place to remember the human toll of African slavery.

How The House came to be

Following its construction in 1776, the House of Slaves became a holding center for enslaved African people to be exported.

The House was owned by an Afro-French woman (Anna Colas Pépin), who owned several ships and participated in the slave trade.

Conditions in the building were harrowing, with many of the imprisoned perishing before they reached the ships.

Captured enslaved people “were imprisoned in dark, airless cells”, and “spent days shackled to the floor, their backs against the walls, unable to move.”

Families were separated both at the House, with men, women, and children being held in separate quarters, as well as after boarding the ships since most of them were not sent to the same locations.

Young girls, in particular, were held separately from the rest of the imprisoned, being “paraded in the courtyard so that the traders and enslavers could choose them for s3x”; if they became pregnant, they were allowed to remain on the island until they gave birth.

Converted into a museum and memorial in 1962, the House of Slaves now stands as a testament to the human suffering and devastation caused by the slave trade.

The House of Slaves was reconstructed and opened as a museum in 1962 largely through the work of Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye who died in 2009.

Ndiaye was an advocate of both the memorial and proclamation that enslaved people were held in the building in great numbers and from here transported directly to the Americas.

Eventually becoming curator of the Museum, Ndiaye claimed that more than a million enslaved people passed through the doors of the house.