Yamoussoukro

Yamoussoukro is the village where Félix Houphouët-Boigny was born, and which he made the capital of Côte d'Ivoire in 1983 and filled with the buildings of a capital before most of the government arrived: eight-lane boulevards lit by ten thousand lamps that run between empty plots, a presidential palace whose lake holds sacred crocodiles fed every afternoon at five, a Grand Mosque, a foundation for peace the size of a conference city, a hotel tower on a hill with a golf course at its feet, a polytechnic — and, above the plain, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, a copy of St Peter's in Rome built in four years and consecrated by John Paul II in 1990, one hundred and fifty-eight metres high, the largest church in the world by area, with seven thousand square metres of stained glass, in which one window shows the president among the disciples. The Baoulé country around it goes on as before, red earth and cocoa and yams; Abidjan is three hours south on the highway.

The traveller comes up from Abidjan for the day — or stays a night, because the boulevards lit and empty at nine are a sight of their own — and goes to the basilica first, in the morning light: the esplanade, the columns, the dome from inside, the glass, the guide's tour up to the gallery; walks the shore of the palace lake at five, at a distance, to see the crocodiles come to the keeper's call; looks in at the Grand Mosque and drives past the Foundation, whose halls have hosted more peace conferences than most capitals; takes the lift to the top of the Hôtel Président for the whole city laid out like a plan; eats attiéké with grilled fish and drinks bandji at a maquis; and buys a Baoulé weight or a carved mask at the artisans' village on the way out.

The Guide's honesty: Yamoussoukro is a monument to one man's will and it does not pretend otherwise — the basilica is magnificent and strange, and the empty boulevards around it are part of what it says; the city is safe, easy and hot, and there is little to do after the list above except sit under the lamps; the crocodiles are wild animals in a city lake, and a keeper died feeding them in 2012 — watch from the wall; the basilica asks for covered shoulders and knees, and the guides are good; the highway from Abidjan is excellent and the bus is fine; Bouaké, a hundred kilometres north, is the country's second city and a different Côte d'Ivoire; and the traveller who leaves with a question about how a country spends its money has understood the visit — Yamoussoukro was built to be looked at, and it repays the look.