Aného, a town of history

Aného, formerly Petit-Popo, is an old coastal trading post between the Atlantic Ocean, Lake Togo and the Mono river. Families from present-day Ghana settled there from the 17th century; the town was an important port of the Atlantic slave trade, then the first capital of German Togoland in the late 19th century (exact dates vary between sources). It is now the main town of the Lacs 1 commune, with 28,237 inhabitants in 2022.

The Aného-Glidji agglomeration is on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List (dossier submitted on 16 December 2021, cultural criteria iii and iv). It has German and French colonial buildings, Afro-Brazilian architecture in the Anéhogan and Adjido districts, a Protestant church (1895), the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul (1898), a small museum and the old German cemetery. The shoreline retreats by several metres a year, a heritage-protection challenge.

Sources: UNESCO (Tentative List no. 6601), Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Republic of Togo.