A concrete obelisk on the inland end of the Kaloum peninsula marks the failed Portuguese-led invasion of November 1970. The attack, codenamed Operation Mar Verde, came by sea in the small hours of the morning; Portuguese commandos and Guinean exiles aimed to topple Sékou Touré, free Portuguese prisoners held by the African liberation movement PAIGC, and assassinate the PAIGC leader Amílcar Cabral, who lived in Conakry. They failed on every count.
The monument is unsubtle — a tall fluted column with a sword-bearing figure at its base — but the history it marks is genuinely consequential. The invasion gave Touré the pretext for a decade of brutal internal purges and reshaped Guinean foreign policy for a generation. Worth a five-minute stop if you are passing.