Senegal - Old Rufisque

From 1444, the Portuguese caravels of Prince Henry the Navigator reached the peninsula of Cape Verde, then known as Berzeguiche. On the edge of the bay dug in this peninsula, Berzeguiche is scattered in a wood of palm groves, the small village of "Mame Coumba Lamb", on a swampy ground, crisscrossed by the arms of a river with fresh water: Rio Fresco. In the 16th century, the small fishing village will take the name of Rufisque. Classified at the same time as Saint-Louis, Dakar and Goree among the radiating centers of the west coast of Africa, the city was erected in full-function commune by decree of June 12, 1880, well before Dakar. Following the application of a town plan developed in 1862, Rufisque is organized in a dualistic structure: in the center the new district of Escale where are the villas of the big traders and the other, to the is like in the west, the agglomeration of the Lebu districts. The protection perimeter of this city is circumscribed in the sector today limited to the south by the east and west canals and to the north by the SNCFS railway line.