About 40 km west of Gaoua, the ruins of Loropéni are Burkina Faso's first and so far only UNESCO World Heritage Site: a complex of dry-stone walls, some still standing over six metres high, enclosing the ruined compound of what was once a fortified settlement linked to the medieval West African gold trade. The site is one of about a hundred such stone enclosures scattered across the border zone of Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, but Loropéni is the largest and best preserved.
A small visitor centre at the site has a museum about the trans-Saharan gold trade and the Lohron and Koulango peoples who probably built and inhabited the walls. The atmosphere is impressive rather than spectacular — a stretch of red laterite walls in the bush, with very little tourism and almost no other visitors. Drive from Gaoua in about an hour, or hire a guide who can also visit a Lobi village on the way.