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Photo: J. Matias de Oluidá, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The fort was built by the Portuguese when tapping into the Atlantic slave trade. When slavery was legally abolished, the fort was abandoned until 1865 when it was reoccupied by the Portuguese. In 1961, the then Republic of Dahomey, one year after its independence from French rule, annexed the fort for good. The fort now serves as the Ouidah Museum of History.
The Forte de São João Baptista de Ajudá is a small restored fort in Ouidah, Benin. Built in 1721, it was the last of three European forts built in that town to tap the slave trade of the Slave Coast. Following the legal abolition of the slave trade early in the 19th century, the Portuguese fort lay abandoned most of the time until it was permanently reoccupied in 1865.
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