If you want to learn about Beninese history, the former capital of Abome is a good place to start. The Dahomey Kingdom, which it was called at the time, used to be huge stretching far through West Africa and Abomey was where the King had his palaces. We visited two of these, which now makes up the Musée Hisroeique de Abomey. The entrance was 2500CFA, which included a guide in French. She showed us some wall carvings of torture methods like putting burning charcoal up someone’s behind and the King’s throne standing on human skulls and explained about the fierce female warriors called the Amazons , but other than that the tour of the museum was quite slow paced and the rest of the long was quite boring in my opinion. One quite funny thing happened when we got to the King’s grave though. Our guide asked the girls in our group if they were having their period, and the ones who said yes were asked to stay outside. The King was a respected man and his dying wish of not letting menstruating women and people wearing hats and scarfs in to his grave was still being practiced.
