Tourist Guide Freetown
Freetown, more than 1 million inhabitants, is the capital, the chief port and
the largest city of Sierra Leone. It is located on the rocky Sierra Leone Peninsula
on the Atlantic coast, at the seaward tip of Serra Leôa, Lion Mountains,
wooded hills rising to a height of 1700 ft.
Freetown was founded by Britain as a settlement for freed slaves in 1787. It
was made capital of the independent Sierra Leone in 1961.
The city is home of Sierra Leone's biggest Krio, or Creole population, descendants
of freed slaves from as far away as Jamaica Haiti, and Cuba, who came to settle
the colony.
Freetown’s characteristic buildings are the bright, tropical-hued houses.
Unfortunately, the city was the scene of fierce fighting in the late 1990s.
It was captured by ECOWAS troops seeking to restore President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
in 1998, and later it was unsuccessfully attacked by rebels of the Revolutionary
United Front.
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