Vodou Shrines

Sacred trees and altars in active daily use throughout the town

Scattered around Togoville are small Vodou shrines: low concrete platforms, sacred trees ringed with cloth and palm leaves, clay figures of the deities. Each is dedicated to a particular spirit (vodu) or ancestor; some are private to a family, others are public and visited by people from all over the region.

You will not get much from a self-guided walk — the practice is dense with meaning that is impossible to read off the surface. Ask at the Maison Royale or at the cathedral for a local guide who can take you to several shrines, explain who they belong to, and arrange a respectful introduction to a priest if you are seriously interested. A small fee and a bottle of palm wine or sodabi are usually appropriate.

things to do sight
A story
Togoville is one of the historic centres of West African Vodou, the spiritual practice carried by enslaved people across the Atlantic to Haiti and the Americas. The shrines you can see today are not relics — they are in active daily use by an overwhelmingly Vodou population, despite the Catholic cathedral a hundred metres away. The town's coexistence of the two faiths is unusual even by West African standards.