Rising among the office towers of Abidjan's business heart, the Salam Mosque of the Plateau is the capital's most conspicuous place of Muslim worship and, increasingly, a sight in its own right. Built on a site of roughly 7,500 square metres along Avenue Crosson Duplessis, it wears a blue-and-gold dome and a slender 65-metre minaret that holds its own against the surrounding skyscrapers—an unusual meeting of faith and finance in the quarter that also shelters the presidential palace and the Hôtel du District. For visitors, the appeal is twofold. The building is one of the largest mosques in West Africa, lavish in its glass mosaics and carved woodwork, and it is also a working community hub whose very concrete walls carry a decades-long story of national politics, crisis and renewal. Watching it at prayer time—especially the Friday congregation—gives a sense of Abidjan's Muslim community that no guidebook illustration can match.

Cathedral

Abidjan · CI

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Paul d'Abidjan) is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Abidjan and one of the most audacious pieces of modern religious architecture on the African continent. Rising from a slight rise in the Plateau, the city's business district, its triangular concrete canopy and soaring cross seem to lean out over the Ebrié Lagoon, framing views of the water and the surrounding towers in equal measure. The cathedral was commissioned by President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and designed by Italian architect Aldo Spirito. The foundation stone was blessed by Pope John Paul II on 11 May 1980 and the completed building was consecrated by the same pope on 10 August 1985. Spirito's bold design earned him the 1982 Europe Architecture Prize, and the cathedral is frequently cited as the second-largest church in Africa after the basilica in Yamoussoukro.