Inside the Royal Palaces of Abomey — Where The Woman King Came to Life

For over two hundred years, the Dahomey kingdom was centered in a walled compound in the city of Abomey in what is now Benin. Successive kings built one of the most powerful kingdoms on the west coast of Africa. Militarily sophisticated, culturally rich, and fierce in ways that European colonial powers consistently underestimated — right up until the French finally took the city in 1892. Béhanzin — the last independent king of Dahomey — burned parts of the palace complex himself rather than surrender them intact.

The Dahomey had the Agojie. Thousands of women warriors, recruited young, rigorously trained, and loyal to the king above everything else. They were real. Not a legend, not a myth — real women who fought and died for a kingdom that used them as one of its most effective military assets.

And the Dahomey captured people from neighboring tribes and sold them to Portuguese and other European slave traders. Systematically, for over a century. It was a core part of how the kingdom funded its power. The same kingdom that produced the Agojie, that built those walls, that held off European colonialism longer than almost anyone else in the region — also built part of its power on the sale of human beings..

Some of this may sound familiar. The Dahomey Amazons — as Western historians called them — have been written about for centuries. If you’ve seen The Woman King with Viola Davis, you’ve seen a version of all of it: the warriors, the kingdom, the uncomfortable reality of a kingdom that resisted colonial powers while also participating in the slave trade. The film takes its liberties, but the roots of it are real.

We visited the Abomey palace complex on our third day in Benin. When you walk through the gates you see a compound. Earthen walls. Open courtyards. Low structures. Sparse. Hot. By any Western definition of the word palace, this isn’t it. But that’s the wrong frame.

The walls were built from sun-dried adobe mud bricks and set with bas-relief carvings — battle scenes, animals, royal rituals, everyday life pressed into the clay. In a kingdom where history was preserved largely through oral tradition, the walls became history, symbolism, and royal messaging all at once. Each king had his own emblem worked into the reliefs, turning the compound into a timeline of dynasties and power. Some oral traditions hold that animal blood — and possibly human blood from sacrifices — was mixed into the mortar to spiritually fortify the structures. Whether or not you take that literally, it tells you something about what these walls meant to the people who built them.

Inside there were mats rather than beds. Pottery. Small chairs and small tables, surprising in their simplicity. A hammock slung between two poles — the king’s travelling seat, carried on the shoulders of men. Ceremonial umbrellas. Drums.

They ask you to take your shoes off for part of the tour. The ground holds heat like a brick in the January sun. There’s something about being barefoot in a place like that — you’re not a tourist with a camera anymore. You’re just there.

At some point I stepped to the side and let the place settle in my head — the king moving through these courtyards. The Agojie walking these grounds. The wives. The ceremony. The weight of who held power here and what it cost.

I thought about it on the long bumpy drive back to Cotonou. It was a long day and everyone was tired and quiet. What was it like to live inside those walls? To be one of the king’s hundreds of wives? To be one of the Agojie, sleeping in that compound, loyal to a king whose power rested partly on fueling slavery?

Some places stay with you because they’re beautiful. Others stay with you because they’re complicated. Abomey is both.

Abomey is about 145 kilometers north of Cotonou — plan for three to four hours each way depending on road conditions. We visited independently for a few days before a larger Overseas Adventure Travel itinerary through West Africa and later onward to the Canary Islands and Madeira. You can read the broader overview of the trip here: Two Worlds, One Trip: West Africa to the Atlantic Islands.

The following day we visited Ganvie, the stilt village often called the “Venice of Africa,” originally built as a refuge from slave raids. I wrote separately about that visit here: The Venice of Africa Was Built to Hide.

I organized the Abomey day through Uprise Travel a few weeks before we left — they arranged private transport and our guide Didier, who was excellent.

The Historical Museum of Abomey was closed for renovation during our visit in January 2026 but the palace grounds were fully open. Wear shoes you can slip on and off easily, bring water, and pack a hat. It’s exposed, hot, and there isn’t much shade.