Then & now
The city's landmarks, from the archive's oldest picture of each to today. Have an old photo of one of them?
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The settlers who founded Freetown in 1792 are said to have given thanks beneath it. A century of it, one picture at a time.


Fort Thornton went up on Tower Hill from about 1792 and became the British governor's house. The building there now was finished in 1954, and since independence it has been home to the country's leaders.


Founded in 1827, the first Western-style university in West Africa. Its old building in Cline Town still stands, below the hill the college later moved to.