page_title: Architecture of Africa
section_title: Benin
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Africa / Medieval architecture / West Africa / Benin
caption_attribution_description: English: Koussoukoingou, Atakora, Benin
context_page_description: Like other aspects of the culture of Africa, the architecture of Africa is exceptionally diverse. Throughout the history of Africa, Africans have developed their own local architectural traditions. In some cases, broader regional styles can be identified, such as the Sudano-Sahelian architecture of West Africa. A common theme in traditional African architecture is the use of fractal scaling: small parts of the structure tend to look similar to larger parts, such as a circular village made of circular houses.
  African architecture has been influenced by external cultures for centuries, according to available evidence. Western architecture has influenced coastal areas since the late 15th century and is now an important source of inspiration for many larger buildings, particularly in major cities.
  African architecture uses a wide range of materials, including thatch, stick/wood, mud, mudbrick, rammed earth, and stone. These material preferences vary by region: North Africa for stone and rammed earth, the Horn of Africa for stone and mortar, West Africa for mud/adobe, Central Africa for thatch/wood and more perishable materials, Southeast and Southern Africa for stone and thatch/wood.
context_section_description: The rise of kingdoms in the West African coastal region produced architecture which drew on indigenous traditions, utilizing wood. Benin City, destroyed during the Benin Expedition of 1897, was a large complex of homes in coursed mud, with hipped roofs of shingles or palm leaves.  The palace contained a sequence of ceremonial rooms and was decorated with brass plaques. The Walls of Benin City were the world's largest man-made structure. Fred Pearce wrote in New Scientist:
  They extend for some 16,000 kilometres in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cover 6500 square kilometres and were all dug by the Edo people. In all, they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.
caption: A traditional tata-somba house in Benin
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