Cotonou · BJ

Place du Souvenir, ex Place des Martyrs

Place du Souvenir is a small but historically loaded public square in Cotonou, set at the corner of Rue 390 and the Route de l’Aéroport in the Haie Vive district. It is best known as the monument site remembering the Beninese soldiers and civilian who died during the failed 1977 mercenary attack on the city, an event that remains one of the defining moments in the country’s modern political history. The visual centerpiece is a powerful concrete monument of three fighters—two men and a woman—moving with weapons and the Beninese flag, inaugurated in January 1979. Once called Place des Martyrs, the square has been reinvented as a civic landmark that combines memory, urban circulation, public art and occasional commemorative ceremonies.