Dakar
Senegal's capital at Africa's westernmost point
Dakar occupies the very western edge of the African mainland, perched on the Cap-Vert peninsula that juts into the Atlantic farther west than any other point on the continent. The capital and largest city of Senegal, with a metropolitan population approaching four million, it is a vibrant hub of West African culture, music and politics, long a crossroads between Africa, Europe and the Americas. Its position once made it the western terminus of trans-Saharan and then transatlantic trade, and today it remains a gateway port and the cultural capital of Francophone West Africa.
The peninsula is a volcanic outcrop, its twin Mamelles hills rising about a hundred meters above a coast of cliffs, coves and beaches battered by Atlantic swells. The climate is hot and semi-arid, cooled by ocean breezes, on the Sahelian fringe where the Sahara gives way to savanna. Just offshore lies Gorée Island, a small rock that for centuries was a node in the Atlantic slave trade and is now a UNESCO memorial. The modern city spreads from the peninsula's tip back along the mainland, its corniche and markets framed by the sea on three sides.
The Lebu people settled the peninsula well before the Portuguese reached the bay in the fifteenth century, and the French built up Dakar in the nineteenth century as the administrative center of their West African empire, linking it by railway to the interior. After independence in 1960 it became the capital of Senegal, hosting Pan-African cultural festivals and earning a reputation as one of the continent's most stable democracies. Dakar today is a center of art, fashion and the mbalax music of Youssou N'Dour, as well as a busy Atlantic port and finish line of the storied rally that bears its name.