AT A GLANCE

Why go?

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.↗↗