Plateau

The Plateau is administrative Dakar: Place de l'Indépendance and its banks, the ministries, the presidential palace with its red-uniformed guards, company head offices, airline desks. You come here to work, to sort out a document, to open an account, to catch a flight the next morning — and the district empties on Friday evening and refills on Monday.

It is also the city's densest stretch of architecture. The Kermel market, an 1860 round hall rebuilt identically after the 1993 fire, sells flowers, imported fruit and shellfish to the neighbourhood's cooks; the Cathedral of African Remembrance, completed in 1936, stands at the end of the boulevard; the Théodore Monod museum at IFAN holds the West African mask and statuary collection that trained generations of anthropologists; and the Museum of Black Civilisations, opened in 2018 near the station, takes over in a round building of fourteen thousand square metres.

Two important departure points are here: the railway station, terminus of the TER to Diamniadio, and the Gorée jetty, where the ferry leaves roughly every hour for a twenty-minute crossing. Beside them, the great Sandaga market — whose 1933 neo-Sudanese building was demolished in 2020 to be rebuilt as it was — carries on trading all around the site.

For a stay, the Plateau suits anyone here on business or stopping over for two nights: everything is walkable, restaurants are plentiful at lunch and scarce at night, and the Sunday quiet is almost provincial.

The evening is the Plateau's real peculiarity. By eight the offices are empty, the streets clear, and you hear your own footsteps on pavements that carried ten thousand people six hours earlier. Dakar residents count it among the easiest districts to walk at night; it is also where you will find least to eat after ten. Plan ahead, or walk down to the Médina, fifteen minutes away, where the canteens and sandwich sellers hold out far later.