Lagos began as Eko, a Bini war camp on a lagoon island, became a Portuguese slaving port, then a British Crown Colony in 1861. Three days trace that arc: Yoruba kingship, Brazilian returnee architecture, the Atlantic trade and independence.
Nigeria's national collection: Nok terracottas from 500 BC, Ife bronze heads, Benin plaques, and the bullet-riddled Mercedes in which General Murtala Muhammed was assassinated in 1976. Open daily 09:00–18:00.
Seat of the Oba of Lagos since roughly 1670, built on the site where Oba Ado settled after the Bini conquest. The name means 'palace at the pepper farm'. Portuguese-donated brass fittings survive in the courtyards.
The oldest quarter of Lagos, settled by Awori fishermen before the Bini arrived. The 1894 Shitta-Bey Mosque on Martins Street was built by Brazilian returnee craftsmen and blessed by an envoy of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
Anglican cathedral begun in 1924 on the site of an 1867 church, its foundation laid by Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther's successors. Crowther, a rescued slave, became the first African Anglican bishop and translated the Bible into Yoruba.
Ninety minutes west of Lagos, Badagry shipped an estimated 550,000 Africans across the Atlantic between 1518 and 1851. The museum's nine galleries hold shackles, branding irons and the Vlekete slave market ledgers.
A canoe crossing and a sand track lead to the beach where captives took their last steps onto slave ships. Two leaning pillars mark the spot; nearby is the 'Attenuation Well' whose water was said to erase memory of home.
Christianity was first preached in Nigeria under the Agia tree here in 1842 by Thomas Birch Freeman. The 1845 First Storey Building nearby housed Bishop Crowther while he translated the Bible into Yoruba, and holds the first storey-building museum.
Built over the old Race Course, this is where the Union Jack came down and Nigeria's green-white-green went up at midnight on 1 October 1960. The four white horses and eagles on the arch have flanked the entrance since 1972.
Afro-Brazilian returnees — the Aguda — settled here from the 1830s after emancipation in Bahia. Their sobrado houses with stucco pilasters and shuttered balconies line Bamgbose, Kakawa and Campos streets, most now crumbling.
An 1898 colonial bungalow in the Nigerian Railway Corporation compound, restored by Legacy 1995. Its rooms document the Lagos–Kano line begun in 1898, with signalling equipment, staff photographs and locomotive plates.
Her Majesty's Broad Street Prison from 1882 until 1979, where Herbert Macaulay and other nationalists were held. The cell blocks were converted in 2010; the original prison walls, gallows site and foundations remain visible around the courtyard.
Fela Kuti's fortified house, declared an independent republic in 1974 and burned by 1,000 soldiers in 1977 — an assault that killed his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. His bedroom, shoes and rooftop bar are preserved as he left them.