The island of Gor&eacute,e lies off the coast of Sene­gal, oppo­site Dakar. From the 15th to the 19th cen­tu­ry, it was the largest slave-trad­ing cen­tre on the African coast. Ruled in suc­ces­sion by the Por­tuguese, Dutch, Eng­lish and French, its archi­tec­ture is char­ac­ter­ized by the con­trast between the grim slave-quar­ters and the ele­gant hous­es of the slave traders. Today it con­tin­ues to serve as a reminder of human exploita­tion and as a sanc­tu­ary for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.