Accra - Attractions

Attractions

Accra is Ghana's cultural and tourist hub, sporting a wide variety of hotels, monuments, museums and nightclubs. The city has three five-star hotels: the Labadi Beach Hotel, the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel and the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel. The Golden Tulip Hotel and Novotel Accra, located in Accra's central business district, are both ranked four stars. There are numerous three-star hotels, including the Hotel Wangara, Hotel Shangri-La and Erata Hotel, as well as many budget hotels. The Accra International Conference Centre and other meeting facilities provide venues for conference tourism, an area in which Ghana leads the rest of the West African sub-region.

Accra furthermore hosts the National Museum, which houses a large collection of Ghanaian historical treasures; the National Theatre, with its distinctive modern Chinese architecture; and the National Cultural Centre, whose arts and crafts bazaar and traditional textile market host traditional handicrafts from all over Ghana.

The Du Bois Centre houses a research library and gallery of manuscripts, as well as the graves of its namesake, the African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, and his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois. The Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum is the resting place of Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah, who oversaw the country's independence from British rule and was a leading exponent of Pan-Africanism.

The city's foremost historical site is the Jamestown area, which contains the national monuments of Ussher Fort and James Fort, and Osu Castle (also known as Christiansborg), built by Danish settlers in the 17th century.

Accra is well known for its Atlantic beachfront. The most popular of the city's beaches is Labadi Beach, along with Kokrobite Beach, which is located 25 kilometres west of Accra. The beachfront area also houses the Academy of African Music and Arts.

Other sites of note include Golden Jubilee House (the new residence and office of the President of Ghana), the Accra Centre for National Culture, the Accra Sports Stadium, Independence Square, the Parliament of Ghana, and the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT.

The Cathedral of the Holy Spirit is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Accra, which was founded in 1943 as the Apostolic Prefecture of Accra. The cathedral itself dates to 1947.