Cultural Sites & Villages in Ghana
Kente looms, stilt villages, sacred lakes and the Asantehene's palace — meet the living traditions of Ghana.
Ghana's cultural heritage is best experienced where it is still being made: in the weaving villages of Ashanti, the painted compounds of Sirigu, and the lakeside shrines of the Volta basin.
Bonwire is the birthplace of kente weaving, where Ashanti hunters are said to have first copied the spider Anansi's web six centuries ago. Half an hour away, Ntonso prints adinkra cloth with calabash stamps dipped in badie-tree dye.
Manhyia Palace in Kumasi is the seat of the Asantehene and home to a museum tracing the Ashanti empire from Osei Tutu I to today. To the west, Nzulezo Stilt Village floats on raffia poles above Lake Tadane.
In the north, Sirigu's women paint geometric Kassena patterns onto their mud-walled compounds, and Lake Bosumtwi — Ghana's only natural lake, formed by a meteorite — is ringed by 30 fishing villages where the Ashanti still come for ancestral rites.
All cultural attractions (22)
Frequently asked
Bonwire and Adanwomase, both 30 minutes outside Kumasi, host roadside loom workshops you can watch — and many sell direct from the loom.
Yes — the palace museum is open daily except on Akwasidae festival days, when the Asantehene receives visitors in the courtyard.
From Beyin in the Western Region, take an hour-long pirogue paddle through the reed channels of Lake Tadane.