Ouaga rewards travellers with thin wallets: its biggest monuments stand unfenced, its museums charge 1,000 FCFA, and a full plate of riz gras costs less than a bottle of water back home. Three days, mostly on foot and in shared taxis.
Burkina's tallest monument, a concrete tower raised for the fallen of the 1980s revolution, stands unfenced on Boulevard des Tansoba. No gate, no ticket, no guard — walk the plinth at any hour and read the inscriptions.
A six-metre bronze of a woman offering a calabash of water greets arrivals outside the colonial-era railway station on Avenue de la Gare. Trains to Bobo-Dioulasso still load here; forecourt vendors pour tea for 100 FCFA.
A steel-and-concrete monument of film reels and seated figures honouring the directors of FESPACO, on a roundabout island off Avenue Kwame N'Krumah. Free to walk around; students revise on the steps in the late shade.
The third of Ouaga's reservoir dams, with a free earthen causeway where fishermen haul nets and market gardeners water lettuce beds at dusk. Walk the crest from the Avenue Charles de Gaulle end for flat sunset views.
Gounghin's neighbourhood market trades food, not souvenirs: sacks of millet and sorghum, dried baobab leaf for tô sauce, shea butter ladled out from around 500 FCFA. Little is price-tagged, so settle the figure first.
Riz gras — rice simmered in tomato and oil broth — is dished from covered pots at pavement kitchens around Rue 15.34 from noon. A plate with a chunk of mutton runs 500-800 FCFA, served on enamel with a hand-washing bucket.
The northern market, where traders sell faso dan fani strip-weave by the metre and stack wax-print offcuts cheap. Two metres of printed cloth starts near 3,000 FCFA, and the tailors' alley behind will sew a shirt in a day.
Dolo, the sorghum beer brewed by women known as dolotières, is ladled from clay pots in open yards across Tanghin. A calabash costs 100-200 FCFA and the gourd is passed around; the day's brew sells out by nightfall.
Purpose-built pavilions off Avenue Charles de Gaulle holding Bwa, Nuna and Mossi masks, royal regalia and a hall on the country's sixty-odd ethnic groups. Entry is 1,000 FCFA, with a small extra charge for cameras.
Around two hundred bronze-casters, leatherworkers and weavers work open-sided workshops on Avenue Bassawarga. Entry costs nothing and watching a lost-wax pour costs nothing; fixed price tags remove the haggling pressure.
Some 260 hectares of protected woodland, once the sacred forest of the Mossi kings, now laced with marked trails and home to warthogs and birdlife inside the city limits. Entry is about 1,000 FCFA at the main gate.
A municipal music garden in Gounghin with rehearsal studios around an open-air stage. Weekday rehearsals carry over the wall for free, and Friday concerts are typically 1,000-2,000 FCFA paid at the gate.