Travel Guide Yamoussou Kro

Yamoussoukro, or "Yakro", former native village of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, city of forest-savannah contact, stopover city and crossroads through which pass all the major roads of the country, renowned intellectual center, Ivorian Venice, long a hub of national and regional politics ... is a city out of proportion.Direction the Ivory Coast of the interior. The one that extends beyond the basic tourist triptych Abidjan-Bassam-Assinie, outside of which the country is still struggling to promote its attractiveness. The regions of the country are full of extraordinary wealth, but unfortunately still not enough promoted.Yamoussoukro is still not a large Ivorian megalopolis. It has only about 300,000 inhabitants, far behind Abidjan (4.7 million inhabitants) and Bouaké (600,000 inhabitants), neck and neck with Daloa (310,000 inhabitants). But it is a confusing city: a chimera adrift, a pharaonic vision in a country where the aspiration to the transcendent cannot overshadow the preoccupations of an invading daily life that makes dreams always too big.In the symbolic layout of the city, the four main buildings (not to be missed) are located at the four cardinal points of the city and each bears the initial of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. "P" for Prefecture to the north, "F" for the Peace Foundation to the south, "H" for Hotel du Président to the east, and "B" for Basilica to the west.Some abhor the megalomaniacal delirium it represents, materialized according to them by a waste of marble, granite and reinforced concrete scattered in the four corners of a savannah and jungle vegetation. Others appreciate its peaceful, surreal and timeless atmosphere, its fresh air and its numerous green spaces that give it such a special image. Eight- to ten-lane avenues lined with double rows of streetlights crisscross the space in blocks right up to the gates of the sumptuous buildings and neighborhoods teeming with all the sounds of the joyful disorder of African life. But today, no one comes to replace the defective bulbs of the street lamps. Although Yakro is still called "Vegas" for the beauty of its duly illuminated night landscapes, the days are long gone when 10,578 light points were lit every day at dusk, offering "admirable effects from the marriage of water and light where mosque, church, temple, palaces and hotels, public buildings, by the magic of the projectors are transformed into monuments of light framed by garlands of street lamps"(The Great Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Ivory Coast, Raymond Borremans). Near the central artery crossing Yakro from south to north, the heart of the city seems to beat faster, punctuated by the continuous ballet of daily activities typical of any city in the country. But as one moves away, Yamoussoukro takes on the appearance of a ghost town that has suspended the course of time and activities, as evidenced by the vast avenues that suddenly stop to give way to laterite tracks tearing a sinuous ribbon of ochre through the fiery green of untamed vegetation. However, Yamoussoukro keeps an undeniable charm, not to say endearing. Of course for its huge basilica that stands higher in the sky than any other building of Christianity erected in this world, perhaps also because the sky seems closer to the ground, the air clearer than elsewhere, with its procession of clouds wandering their cottony symphony in a crystalline light