Dakar is the capital of Senegal and one of the most vibrant cities in West Africa. It covers the Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost tip of the continent, looking out over the Atlantic. Lively, musical and booming, it mixes overflowing markets, a world-renowned contemporary art and music scene (Youssou N'Dour's mbalax was born here), city beaches and a cuisine built around thiéboudienne, the national dish.
Its skyline is defined by the colossal African Renaissance Monument, the circular Museum of Black Civilisations and the long Corniche running along the ocean. Its key neighbourhoods are Plateau (the colonial and administrative heart), Médina, Yoff, Ngor and Les Almadies. Ferries leave its port for nearby Gorée Island, a symbol of the memory of the slave trade, and Lake Retba (the Pink Lake) and the Île de la Madeleine are close by.
This guide covers the essentials of Dakar: what to see (monuments, museums, markets and islands), what it costs with real verified prices, how to get around on the new TER train and the BRT, how to get there from Blaise Diagne airport, where to sleep and eat, and answers to the questions first-time visitors ask most.
Dakar began as a Lebou fishing village on the Cap-Vert peninsula and grew under French rule from the 19th century. France moved its base there and, in 1902, made it the capital of French West Africa in place of Saint-Louis. It was a colonial capital and a key Atlantic port. After independence in 1960 it became the capital of Senegal, which turned it into a cultural beacon for the continent. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Cape Verde peninsula, Africa's westernmost point: Dakar, a vibrant and cosmopolitan capital; Gorée, an island that keeps the memory of the slave trade; the pink lake of Retba, and coastal villages of Lebou fishermen and artists' retreats.
Read the history of Dakar and the coast →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 7 activities in Dakar. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
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No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the name Dakar existed, before the French, the docks and the high-rises of Plateau, the Cape Verde Peninsula already had owners: the Lebou, a people of fishermen and farmers who settled on this outcrop of red earth and black basalt, the point where Africa reaches furthest west into the Atlantic. They founded villages such as Ngor, Yoff, Ouakam and Hann, self-governing communities run by councils of notables and by their own religious brotherhood, the Layène. Even today, well into the 21st century, those neighbourhoods keep a strong Lebou character and an identity that has survived centuries of change.
The origin of the name 'Dakar' is disputed. The most widespread explanation traces it to the Wolof 'deuk raw' ('the land of refuge') or to 'dakhar', the tamarind, a common tree in the area. Whatever its origin, that small fishing village was destined to become one of the continent's great cities for one relentless geographical reason: its position. The Cape Verde Peninsula was the first and last land in Africa on the Atlantic route between Europe, the Cape Verde islands and the Americas, and that geographical privilege would shape its entire destiny.
From the 15th to the 18th century, however, the focus of the European presence was not Dakar but the nearby island of Gorée, fought over by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French as a base for the slave trade and Atlantic commerce. The mainland coast, including the future Dakar, stayed in the background, inhabited by the Lebou and by the Wolof and Serer kingdoms of the interior. The great city had not yet been born; the 19th century would raise it almost out of nothing.
The decisive turn came in the mid-19th century. France, which already controlled Saint-Louis and the mouth of the Senegal River, was looking for a better-placed deep-water port on the Atlantic route. In 1857, the French navy formally founded Dakar and built a fort on the tip of the peninsula, facing Gorée. The construction of the port and, above all, the arrival of the Dakar–Saint-Louis railway in 1885 —the first in West Africa— sent the city's growth soaring, and it began to draw merchants, officials and workers from across the region.
The definitive leap came in 1902, when France moved the capital of French West Africa (AOF) to Dakar. This vast colonial federation grouped present-day Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Niger and Mauritania. Overnight, Dakar became the administrative, military and economic centre of an immense territory. The Plateau district was laid out with its avenues, its government palace, its colonial-style buildings and its cathedral; the port and the railway were expanded; and the city became one of the most important Atlantic stopovers between Europe, Africa and South America.
That development had a dark and deeply unequal side. After the plague epidemic of 1914, the colonial authorities pushed urban segregation: the African population was forced into the Médina district, while Plateau was reserved for Europeans. Even so, Dakar was also the setting for a unique political history: the 'Four Communes' of Senegal (Dakar, Gorée, Rufisque and Saint-Louis) had a status that allowed their African inhabitants to elect a deputy to the French Parliament. In 1914, Blaise Diagne —whose name the international airport bears today— became the first African elected as a deputy in Paris, a milestone in the long struggle for citizenship and rights.
The Second World War placed Dakar on the strategic chessboard of the Atlantic. After the fall of France in 1940, the colony came under the Vichy regime, and in September of that year a fleet from Britain and de Gaulle's Free France tried to take the city in the failed Battle of Dakar, driven back by the coastal batteries and ships loyal to Vichy. The city did not switch sides until late 1942. Thousands of tirailleurs sénégalais —the infantry soldiers recruited in French West Africa— fought for France in both world wars, a sacrifice that would later fuel demands for equality and independence.
The post-war years were a time of political and intellectual ferment. Dakar became a hotbed of ideas and the cradle of the 'négritude' movement, the current that asserted the value of Black cultures against colonialism, led by the poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor. In 1960, after the brief experiment of the Mali Federation, Senegal gained independence, and Senghor —poet, member of the Académie française and first president— made Dakar the capital of the new nation and a cultural beacon for all of Africa.
Under Senghor and his successors, Dakar hosted events that put it on the world stage, such as the First World Festival of Black Arts in 1966, which brought together artists from Africa and the diaspora. The city grew at a rapid pace, drawing migrants from the countryside and from all over West Africa, and spilled beyond its colonial limits towards Pikine, Guédiawaye and the suburbs, with the housing, transport and service problems typical of a large, expanding metropolis.
If one thing has defined Dakar in recent decades, it is its cultural energy. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the city has been the birthplace of mbalax, the genre that blends the traditional rhythms of Wolof sabar with pop, jazz and funk, and whose global star is Youssou N'Dour, ambassador of Senegalese music. Alongside it flourished a socially engaged hip-hop scene —movements like Y'en a marre carried real political weight— and a vibrant visual arts scene, with the Biennale of Contemporary African Art (Dak'Art) as one of the continent's great artistic events.
On the symbolic front, the 21st century brought Dakar two monumental gestures. In 2010 the African Renaissance Monument was unveiled on the hills of Ouakam: a bronze statue almost 50 metres tall, higher than the Statue of Liberty, as controversial for its cost and aesthetics as it is now an emblem of the city. And in 2018 the Museum of Black Civilisations opened, an ambitious circular building inspired by the traditional architecture of Casamance, set to play a central role in the debate over the restitution of African heritage looted during the colonial era.
Today's Dakar is a metropolis of several million people that combines the bustle of its markets and its 'cars rapides' with large-scale infrastructure projects: Blaise Diagne International Airport, opened in 2017 far from the centre; the TER commuter train, rolled out from 2021; and the electric-bus BRT, all aimed at easing congestion in a city that never stops growing. Political capital of a country considered one of the most stable in West Africa, home to regional organisations and a meeting point for the diaspora, Dakar still gazes out at the Atlantic from the continent's westernmost tip, true to its calling as a bridge between Africa and the world.
