Beaches and hills around a historic harbour
Freetown was founded in 1792 as a settlement for formerly enslaved people, and its history is told at the Sierra Leone National Museum near the site of the old Cotton Tree, long a symbol of the city. It rises steeply from the harbour into green hills, where the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary cares for rescued chimpanzees. The Freetown peninsula has some of West Africa's finest beaches, including River Number Two and Tokeh, and boats run to the Banana Islands and to Bunce Island, a former slave fort.