Lomé is an unusual capital: it lies along a long beach on the Gulf of Guinea and is at the same time so close to the Ghanaian border that its last neighbourhoods practically touch it. That double nature — seaside city and border city — gives it a crossroads feel, with a busy port, tree-lined avenues, old buildings from the German era and a tireless commercial rhythm. It is the point through which nearly every traveller enters and leaves Togo.
Its great symbol is the Grand Marché, the central market once ruled by the legendary 'Nana Benz', the women traders who made fortunes selling 'wax' fabrics and came to drive a good part of the country's economy. A few kilometres away, the striking Akodessewa Fetish Market gathers the raw materials of traditional medicine and voodoo for the whole region. In between, the German-style Sacred Heart Cathedral, the National Museum, the Independence Monument and the refurbished Palais de Lomé round off a centre full of history.
This guide explores Lomé with a practical eye: what to see in the city and its markets, how to approach the world of voodoo respectfully, how to get around safely by motorbike taxi, where to eat good grilled fish at the seafront 'maquis', and how to use the capital as a logistics base for trips to Togoville, Lake Togo or the mountains of Kpalimé. With one or two well-organised days, Lomé stops being a mere stopover and becomes an intense introduction to Togo.
Lomé began as a modest Ewe village of fishermen and smugglers next to the border, and only gained importance in the late 19th century: in 1897 the Germans chose it as the capital of their colony of Togoland, replacing old Aného, drawn by its beach suitable for landings and its border position for trade. From that German period remain the cathedral, a few buildings and the layout of the centre; then came the French mandate after the First World War, independence in 1960 and the long decades of the Gnassingbé family in power. From border village to today's port metropolis, the full story of Lomé is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The 56 km strip of beach that was the Slave Coast and the cradle of vodun: this is where Germany founded its colony, and where a lakeside village, Togoville, gave the country its name.
Read the history of Lomé and the coast (Maritime Region) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
By African standards, Lomé is a young capital. Where a metropolis of almost two million people stands today, in the mid-19th century there was nothing but a handful of Ewe fishing and farming villages beside a beach on the Gulf of Guinea. The city's name is said to come from 'Alotimé' or 'Alo-mé', after the 'alo' shrubs that grew in the area, in the Ewe language.
What first brought it to life was trade, not politics. The coast between present-day Ghana and Benin was a land of intense exchange, and the village of Lomé, right on the edge between the British sphere of influence on the Gold Coast and the territories to the east, became an ideal spot for smuggling: goods came in on one side of the border and were sold on the other, dodging taxes. African and European merchants began to settle there, drawn by that strategic position.
Along the coast, towns such as Aného (the old 'Petit Popo') and Bè were older, more established centres. Lomé was still a secondary place, but its mix of open beach, flat land and closeness to the border would make it, within a few decades, the big winner from the arrival of the Germans.
In 1884, at the height of the European scramble for Africa, the German explorer and diplomat Gustav Nachtigal signed a series of treaties with local chiefs on the coast — the best known with King Mlapa III in Togoville, on the shores of Lake Togo. With them, Germany declared a protectorate over the coastal strip it called Togoland, recognised by the European powers the following year. That was the birth of the German colony of Togo.
The first administrative capital was on the coast, but in 1897 the Germans moved the seat of government to Lomé. The choice made commercial and political sense: the beach allowed goods to be landed via a pier, and the border position favoured trade with the neighbouring British colony. The Germans laid out the grid of the city centre, put up administrative buildings, a cathedral (the Sacred Heart, from 1902), railway stations and a pier, and ran railway lines inland — towards Aného, Kpalimé and Atakpamé — to carry out coffee, cocoa, cotton and palm oil.
Germany presented Togo as its 'model' colony ('Musterkolonie') for its relative prosperity and balanced budget, but that order rested on forced labour, harsh taxes and an authoritarian administration. Lomé grew with the pace of trade and colonial bureaucracy, and by the early 20th century it was already a port city in the making, with neighbourhoods of African and European merchants and of the nearby Brazilian-African world of the 'Agudás', descendants of returned slaves.
Togo's colonial fate changed abruptly with the First World War. In August 1914, just as the conflict began, British and French troops invaded Togoland from the neighbouring colonies. German resistance was brief: after the destruction of the powerful Kamina radio station — key to the German empire's communications in Africa — the colony surrendered within a few weeks, one of the first Allied victories of the war.
Once the war was over, the League of Nations split the former German Togoland into two mandates: the western part came under British administration (and would eventually become part of Ghana), and the eastern part, more populous and with Lomé as its capital, went to France in 1922. That partition cut the Ewe people in two, leaving them divided between two different colonial administrations, a wound that would fuel calls for reunification for decades.
Under the French mandate, Lomé remained the capital and the economic centre. The city became French in its administration, its schools and its official language, but kept its trading spirit. It was in this period that the legendary 'Nana Benz' flourished: the women traders who dominated the 'wax' cloth business from the Grand Marché and came to carry enormous weight in the country's economy, a symbol of Togo's thriving trade run by women.
After the Second World War, French Togo went from mandate to UN trust territory and moved gradually towards self-government. In 1956 it became an autonomous republic within the French Union and, finally, on 27 April 1960 Togo declared its independence. Its first president was Sylvanus Olympio, a nationalist leader and businessman, who governed the young state from Lomé.
Independence was soon marked by tragedy. In January 1963, Olympio was assassinated in a military coup — one of the first coups in post-colonial Africa — in an episode that involved the then sergeant Gnassingbé Eyadéma. After a few years of instability, Eyadéma took full power in another coup in 1967 and set up a one-party regime that would rule the country for almost four decades, one of the longest dictatorships in Africa.
When Eyadéma died in 2005, power passed to his son, Faure Gnassingbé, in a highly contested succession that sparked protests and repression. The Gnassingbé family has stayed at the head of the country ever since, in a system criticised by the opposition and by human rights organisations. As the capital, Lomé has been the main stage of that long political story: from the independence celebrations to the large demonstrations and their harsh repression.
Today's Lomé is a coastal metropolis that blends its colonial legacy with the drive of a major West African city. Its engine is the Port Autonome de Lomé, one of the few deep-water ports in the region able to take large container ships, which turns the city into a logistics hub for the whole landlocked interior — Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali — and one of the most important transhipment ports on the gulf.
The city keeps its status as a 'border capital': the Kodjoviakopé neighbourhood reaches right up to the Ghanaian border, and the Aflao crossing is one of the busiest in the region. That border character, together with the trade of the Grand Marché and the port activity, keeps Lomé a bustling marketplace, strongly shaped by informal trade and by networks that cut across the colonial borders.
In recent years, projects such as the restoration of the Palais de Lomé — reopened in 2019 as a cultural centre with its large botanical park — aim to showcase the city's heritage and attract visitors. Above all, Lomé remains the gateway to Togo: the place almost every traveller arrives through and sets off from towards the voodoo of Togoville, the beaches to the east, the mountains of Kpalimé or the Tamberma north. A young but intense city, in just a few decades of history it sums up much of modern Togo.
