Abidjan
— — a city built around a lagoon.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest city on the Ivorian coast, set on a chain of peninsulas and islands inside the Ébrié Lagoon. The Plateau district carries the skyline; Cocody holds the embassies and the harp-cabled cathedral of Saint Paul. Population passed five million in the 2010s. The lagoon opens to the Atlantic through the Vridi Canal cut in 1950.
Abidjan, 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.
Abidjan is the largest city and economic capital of Côte d'Ivoire, set on the Atlantic coast of West Africa around the Ébrié Lagoon. The metropolitan population is roughly six million, making it the fourth-largest urban area in Sub-Saharan Africa. The lagoon, ninety kilometres long and connected to the Atlantic since 1950 by the Vridi Canal, divides the city into four main districts: Plateau, Cocody, Treichville, and Marcory. Yamoussoukro, two hundred and fifty kilometres north, has held the title of political capital since 1983, but most institutions still operate here.
Saint Paul's Cathedral in Plateau, completed in 1985 to a design by the Italian architect Aldo Spirito, is the building most associated with the city. A leaning concrete prow is held by steel cables that recall a harp, with a freestanding statue of Saint Paul as anchor. Across the lagoon, the Pyramid of Abidjan — a sixteen-storey inverted ziggurat from 1973 by Rinaldo Olivieri — has stood largely empty for decades but still defines the Plateau skyline. The skyline reads modern, mid-century, and tropical at once.
The climate is equatorial, with two rainy seasons — a heavy one from May through July and a shorter one in October and November. Temperatures stay between twenty-three and thirty-one degrees through the year. The Atlantic trade winds keep the lagoon districts breathable through the heaviest months; humidity rarely drops below seventy percent. The Harmattan, the dry dust-laden wind off the Sahara, reaches Abidjan briefly in January and softens the light to a pale gold. The best months for walking the city are December and August.