Tourist Attractions & Monuments Mauritania

Accessible from Kaédi by a good 115 km track, the Foum Gleita dam is located near M'Bout, a large agricultural village, a former colonial post that has kept a very particular architecture. This impressive work of 43 m height and 110 m length holds 500 million m³ of water. Completed in 1984, it has allowed the irrigation of more than 2,500 hectares of land, and facilitates the cultivation of rice for the inhabitants of the region. It is the largest dam in Mauritania, located on the Gorgol River.

Kaédi, the city where many Mauritanian ethnic groups live, has given birth to a colorful market. You must see this melting pot where Arabs-Berbers and Africans-Mauritanians of all origins and almost all conditions mix. These different populations have brought their goods and crafts, which are piled up in this market in which you can get lost because it is so well supplied! Fruits and vegetables, fish, fabrics, leather work, dairy products, cereals, everyday objects and others... A change of scenery and authenticity guaranteed!

On the track that leads from Nbeika to Matmata, about 25 km, we find on the left, a few kilometers before Matmata, a dozen astonishing small constructions of about 1.5 m high. They are granaries, still used nowadays, which would have been built by farmers, the Gangari, who lived in the region about 2 000 years ago. They seem to have been the ancestors of the Soninke. These cylindrical stone constructions, erected near cultivable areas (at the time), allowed them to store seeds.

Like Ouadane, Oualata and Chinguetti, Tichitt is full of century-old manuscripts with delicate illuminations, witnesses of a past and splendid period, during which the religious studied Islam, sciences and other fields, in the greatest seriousness. You can visit one of these libraries, modest in appearance but containing treasures of calligraphy, preserved with great difficulty for centuries. A guard will put on thick gloves before gently manipulating the pages of these manuscripts before your amazed eyes.

It dates from the ^14th century, but some parts, such as the minaret, were restored in the early ^20th century. It is in the neighborhood of the mosque that the last old houses of Tichit remain, beautifully decorated and with the typical architecture of Saharan ksour . In 2013, while Tichit hosted the Festival of Ancient Cities, the event allowed the rehabilitation of one hundred houses Tichittoises. The mosque has also benefited from this event, the large number of participants and guests have honored him.

Created in 1996, they produced their first harvest in 1999. Their goal is to diversify the food supply of the inhabitants of Oualata, to provide a complementary source of income to the 60 families who operate them and to fix the population in the region thanks to 2 reservoirs which, in the hot season, work with solar panels. If you have the chance to meet one of the 2 engineers who work there, visit them with him, you will be amazed. The water is first pumped from a non-permanent water table, raised and then stored in a reservoir, the pressure exerted making it naturally flow back down to the gardens.

Then, the irrigation system set up allows to save water by allocating to each plant the flow that is necessary for it. This technique has made it possible to introduce species that would have been incompatible with the climate of the region. We discover date palms, jujube trees, baobabs, lemon trees, mandarin trees, mango trees and even vines! Vegetables are not forgotten with tomatoes, beans and onions consumed fresh on the spot or dried. So much so that the market garden production is today superior to the consumption of the inhabitants! Fruits and vegetables are exported to Néma. The gardens also produce compost from camel dung, medicinal plants and natural insecticides. This vegetation attracts a lot of game, including a few hares, which are an important food supplement for those who trap them.

Like the three other ancient cities of Mauritania, Ouadane, Chinguetti and Tichitt, Oualata is home to treasures in its library, preserved by chance and with care by the inhabitants through time, sometimes with the means at hand! In the room to the right are old manuscripts belonging to the four families of Oualata. Opposite is the library of Taleb Boubekar, traditional chief of the city, who died around 1915. This library is full of centuries old writings, vestiges of another time.

In the old city, you must visit the small store that Meîja has installed. She explains how the women of Oualata reproduce the houses and the decorations specific to this city, down to the smallest details. Indeed, it is the women who take care of the superb wall decoration of the houses of Oualata, the red capital of the Mauritanian desert. Geometric shapes drawn with clay, whose miniature reproductions are known throughout the country, and can serve as beautiful souvenirs.

There is no need to show you the way to get there: perched on a promontory, you can see it clearly while you are still 30 minutes from Oualata. Built in 1912, it successively housed the French army during the pacification of the region, then political prisoners from the independence of Mauritania. Since 1990, the authorities have closed this prison. The triangular building is impressive and appears to be in a perfect state of preservation, seen from the outside. Inside, around the courtyard, the prisoners' cells are scattered. It is hard to imagine what the conditions of the men incarcerated here were like not so long ago. A small opening allowing a little light to pass through, a living space reduced to a minimum, because the cells were crowded, the diseases, the heat and the mistreatment must have made the life expectancy very limited. One comes out of this fort with shivers down one's spine.

It is possible to admire Oualata by taking the stairs on the left, just after the entrance of the fort. You are then on the roof of the cells! Going back down from the fort towards Oualata, on the right, the French cemetery shelters a dozen graves, among which the one of Bonnel de Mézières who administered the region at the beginning of the ^XXth century. Passionate about archaeology, he contributed greatly to the excavations carried out at Aoudaghost and Koumbi Saleh.

Warning: Before considering a visit, inquire about the feasibility of the site with local tourism professionals.

Just before reaching the economic capital of Mauritania, the Etoile bay is astonishing by the shape of the rocks sculpted by erosion that surround it. It is almost closed and is an ideal shelter for passing sailboats or kitesurfing. This bay has revealed many archaeological sites, unfortunately very degraded since the expansion of Nouadhibou. For the amateurs, Adama (+222 465 307 23) manages an oyster farm, where you can taste excellent oysters. It is located in front of the Auberge des Dolphins.

Even if it is extremely difficult to visit them if you don't know a member of the SNIM staff, it is worth a try. In an atmosphere charged with a reddish dust, you wander under an unbearable heat, consequence of the sun but also of the furnaces, while taking care of the steel monsters which carry the ore and while startling with each shooting of mines... An impression of the end of the world, Dantesque and terrifying at the same time! Unfortunately, these mines are the scene of many work accidents, most of the time quite serious.

The city has 8 symbols that you may not visit all of: the street of the 40-Savants, the House of Arms, the new mosque, the fortifications, the old mosque, the three houses of the city's founders, the fortified well and, finally, the two towers erected to control access to the well.

Good plan: in the house of Haj Yacoub, stand on the balcony and enjoy the soothing sound of the wind in the palm trees, while the gaze stretches far out into the desert, towards Chinguetti...

Ouadane was finally abandoned for 3 reasons: the cement (banco) was dissolving under the rain, termites were making the roofs collapse and finally the wind. In the lower part of the old city, to avoid quarrels concerning the delimitation of plots of land in case the sand would cover the enclosures, the foundations of these are 2 meters deep, thus preventing any dispute!

The ancient city was the object of restorations with the drip, according to the budgets received. In 2002, Portuguese funding allowed the rehabilitation of the mosque, the Rue des 40-Savants and some houses. Elsewhere, many walls and facades are in unstable balance. Fatalistically, the guide will tell you that it has been like this for so many years, so why worry? The guide will prove to be indispensable, because the points of interest are numerous and difficult to spot by a neophyte. It is easy to get lost in this gigantic labyrinth, which is not suitable for people with reduced mobility.

Several private libraries exist in Ouadane. You will discover there superb manuscripts. One of the most interesting is certainly that of Sidi Mohamed Ould Abidin Sidi (✆ +222 44 95 52 10). He likes to repeat that the conservation of these treasures faces many obstacles, the first of which is himself! So there is no reason to blame him for showing only manuscripts that are only 2 or 3 centuries old: he has the rightness of mind to keep the oldest ones safe, to show them only to researchers. Who can blame him?

Mauritanian cement, otherwise known as banco, is used as a binder for building houses. In Chinguetti, it has been extracted for centuries from a mine located less than a kilometer southeast of the city. One can access underground galleries of several hundred meters, by letting oneself go down to the bottom of a well hung on a beast skin. It is obviously not of any rest, but the discovery of these labyrinthine galleries is astonishing. They are several meters high in some places and leave barely enough space to crawl in others.

We should rather speak of the buildings of the fort, because it is a set of several constructions that constitutes the former French garrison at the time of colonization. In January 1909, Chinguetti fell into the hands of the French legionnaires who, 10 years later, built Fort Claudel, in honor of one of their commanders. The most important building of the fort is made up of imposing pillars that support beautiful arcades. The Claudel post, rehabilitated in 1983, bears witness to the colonial architectural heritage in Mauritania.

North of Nouadhibou, until 1997, around 300 monk seals had been counted here and along the Western Sahara coast. When you consider that the world population of this species has dwindled to just 500 individuals, it's easy to see how vital the Cap Blanc reserve is, especially as the remaining monk seals are scattered in several small colonies and therefore not very viable. In 1997, the authorities found 150 monk seals stranded on the beach, not counting those that may have died at sea. The cause of this catastrophe has never been fully elucidated... There have been suggestions of a virus or the animals ingesting toxic algae.

In any case, the current political situation in Western Sahara prevents any reliable census of the surviving monk seals.

Several dozen are present on the Atlantic coast, 30 km north of Nouadhibou, but in the Western Sahara. A Spanish NGO, in cooperation with Mauritania, is working to protect the species. Today, meeting a monk seal at the foot of the Cap Blanc cliff is utopian, even if the museum's janitor keeps the legend alive. If you'd like to take up the challenge, arm yourself with patience, a good camera and a stroll along the wind-sculpted coastline. If you can't spot a monk seal, you'll probably see plenty of birds, and be able to pick up a nice harvest of shells!

Aleg is flanked, towards the pontoon, by a depression, vast but not very pronounced, filled by a lake whose surface area varies according to the rainfall. Fed by the Katchi wadi and its endoreic watershed of 3,800 km², this body of water would be, like the lakes of Rkîz (in Mauritania) and Guiers (in Senegal), located on the former course of the Senegal River. In this basin, surrounded by dunes and quicksand, many migratory birds, including teal, pintail and pike-perch, gather during the northern winter.

Located in the center of the city, in the north, you will certainly see it: its high minarets are precious landmarks in Nouakchott, which can help you find your way back. Built in the 1970s, the Faysal Mosque, known as the Saudi Mosque, has two characteristic minarets. In January 2023, it was equipped with high quality prayer rugs, and this over its entire area, namely 6 600^m2! Its sandy color makes it perfectly integrated into the city, and on windy days, it seems to disappear.

The museum, adjacent to the city's library, is a motley collection of very interesting objects, but it needs some tidying up and cleaning! It will be easier to enjoy the visit of this site if you are accompanied by a serious and well-known guide, for a small fee of about 1,000 MRU. Otherwise, you may miss the local traditions and nomadic customs represented by many household utensils and objects. Nice view from the terrace of this traditional house.

The National Park of Diawling was created to respond to the degradation of natural spaces caused by dams built on the Senegal River. For some years, park managers have recreated the seasonal flood, using dykes and structures, the main source of the park's wealth. This park with a human face, of 16 000 hectares, once again receives visits to migratory birds such as ducks, teal, swallows and other eagles or hawks. The abundance of fish, during wintering in these low-depth waters attracts crested, cormorants, pelicans and herons. Warthogs and herds of cattle, goats and camels are attracted by the burgeoning vegetation that grows in quantity on the shores released by the waters. The park is inhabited by sedentary Wolof, less and less nomadic Moors and Des.

In the direction of Choûm, 12 kilometers from Atar, is the museum of Touezekt, opened in 2005 by the patron El Khalil Ould Dah N'Tahah. This small structure presents in a detailed and precise way the habits and customs of the Mauritanians: nearly 6,000 archaeological pieces are exposed, as well as a hundred manuscripts! You can observe coins, stamps, military medals, utensils and traditional costumes... And other collections testifying of the history. Like what, a lot of good will can make up for the lack of means.

It is Zeinebou Abdel Kader who manages the museum today and takes care of the visits to the library, which no longer has a curator since the death of Mohamed Lemrabott Ould Taleb who was in charge. Tidjikdja was an important center of religious education. More than five thousand manuscripts make up its library, covering Islamic jurisprudence, medicine, social sciences, Arabic grammar, poetry, esotericism, astrology, mysticism...

At KP 235, shortly before Chami, is the central headquarters of the PNBA where you can pay the entrance fee. Opposite is the interpretation center, built in 2012. There are beautiful aerial photos, a sample of the fauna and flora, a mural that describes the life of the Imraguans, a dolphin skeleton... If the door is closed, look for the guard at the back or in the building on the other side of the road! A good introduction (or conclusion) to the visit of the park.

Do you love movie theaters? Inveterate music lover? Fascinated by literature? A photography buff? A contemporary dance enthusiast? Library rat? Whatever your passion, whatever your interests, the French Institute will satisfy your every artistic and cultural taste. We offer literary meetings, film screenings, various exhibitions, reading evenings, concerts and artistic workshops (plastic arts, classical dance, breakdance, musical awakening...). To your diaries!