Ouaga's culture runs on hand-work: bronze poured in sand moulds at Kamsonghin, bogolan mud-cloth dried in courtyards, and granite carved into monuments an hour east at Laongo. Add CITO's forum theatre and the Musée National's mask halls and three days fill themselves.
A walled compound on Boulevard Charles de Gaulle with roughly 500 artisans in open ateliers — bronze casters, leather workers, bogolan dyers and Dogon-style wood carvers, all working in view. Open 08:00–18:00 daily; entry free, fixed-price shop at the gate.
The Kamsonghin quarter is Ouaga's lost-wax bronze district, where families have cast since the 1960s. Wax models are packed in clay, fired in charcoal pits and poured by hand. Workshops run mornings into early afternoon; mid-week is when pours happen.
The old Friday mosque in the Dioulasoba quarter, built in Sudano-Sahelian mud-brick style with tapering minarets and protruding toron beams used as scaffolding during annual replastering. Non-Muslims view from the street and courtyard edge.
A 30-metre concrete arch on the Ouaga 2000 axis, raised in the 1980s Sankara era as a memorial to Burkinabè who died for the nation. Its brutalist geometry is the city's most photographed piece of modern architecture and catches strong late light.
Set on the Ouaga 2000 road, the national museum holds masks of the Bwa, Bobo, Nuna and Mossi peoples, royal Mossi regalia and textiles, with cases explaining which masks dance at funerals versus harvests. Tuesday–Sunday, roughly 09:00–17:00.
Espace Gambidi in Gounghin is the base of the late Prosper Kompaoré's theatre movement and doubles as a gallery and rehearsal yard for contemporary Burkinabè painters and dancers. Courtyard café under mango trees between shows.
CITO in Gounghin is the country's leading independent theatre house, running forum-theatre pieces in Mooré and French plus stand-up nights. Programme posted at the gate; performances usually Thursday–Saturday evenings with an open-air stage.
A 1960s single-screen cinema on Avenue Kwame N'Krumah with 700 seats and ceiling fans, one of FESPACO's core competition venues. Outside festival weeks it screens Burkinabè and Nigerian features to a loud, talkative local audience.
An open-air granite park 35 km east of Ouaga where sculptors from over 20 countries have carved faces, spirals and reliefs directly into the bedrock since the 1989 symposium. Roughly 100 works spread across bare rock slabs; go early before the stone bakes.
Gounghin's dye courtyards produce bogolan — cotton strip-cloth painted with fermented river mud over a leaf-bath base, then sun-dried into rust and charcoal patterns. Workshops let you paint a panel and collect it once dry.
Sixty kilometres north-west of Ouaga, this museum founded by lawyer-poet Frédéric Pacéré Titinga gathers Mossi bronzes, a hall of masks, a re-created traditional village and a stone garden of the Burkinabè legal tradition. Open daily, guide included.
On Avenue de la Nation, the Institut Français runs the city's steadiest cultural calendar: concerts on the garden stage, photo exhibitions, a bandes dessinées library and screenings of new Burkinabè cinema. Programme posted at the entrance each month.