Yaoundé
— — a green capital climbing its own ridges.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Cameroon, set on a chain of forested hills about 200 kilometres inland from the Atlantic coast. Locals call it the city of seven hills, though the count depends on who is doing the counting. The air is cooler than Douala because the centre sits above 700 metres. Mount Febe rises to the north and the basilica on its slope catches the afternoon light. The markets at Mokolo and Mfoundi carry plantain, ndolé greens and bright printed cloth, and the rains come twice a year.
Yaoundé, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Yaoundé is the political capital of Cameroon, with a metropolitan population estimated at about 4 million, the second-largest city in the country after the economic capital, Douala. It sits in the Centre Region, about 200 kilometres east of the Atlantic coast, on a series of hills between roughly 700 and 1,000 metres in elevation, which gives the city a noticeably cooler and wetter climate than the coastal lowlands. The settlement was founded as a German trading post in 1888, became the capital of French Cameroun in 1922, and has been the national capital since Cameroon's independence in 1960.
Yaoundé's elevation, around 750 metres at the city centre, places it well above coastal Douala and gives the capital a tropical highland climate. Average daytime temperatures hold between about 24 and 29 degrees Celsius through the year, with two rainy seasons (a shorter one from March to June and a longer one from September to November) separated by drier spells. Mount Febe to the north of the centre rises to about 1,073 metres and carries the Benedictine Monastery of Mont Febe on its slope, a long-standing landmark visible from much of the city below.
Yaoundé Nsimalen International Airport (NSI), about 25 kilometres south-east of the centre, is the main air gateway, with daily flights to Paris, Brussels, Addis Ababa and Istanbul. Inside the city the steady landmarks are the Reunification Monument by the Cameroonian artist Gédéon Mpando, the Notre-Dame des Victoires cathedral, and the Mvog-Betsi Zoo on the western edge. The Musée National du Cameroun, in the former presidential palace, holds the strongest single collection of regional masks, beadwork and Bamoun royal objects in the country. French is the working language of the capital.