Great Mosque of Djenné

Interesting facts

The spires crowning the three towers of the prayer wall are each topped with an ostrich egg.

The interior is a forest of ninety massive rectangular earthen pillars, so dense that they block most views across the prayer hall.

The roof has small vents capped with upturned fired-clay bowls; lifting them lets hot air escape and cools the hall.

The mosque stands on a platform of about 75 by 75 metres, raised some three metres above the market square and reached by six stairways.

The 1907 rebuilding was directed by Ismaila Traoré, head of Djenné's guild of masons, who was famous throughout the Sahel.

In 1910 the French writer Félix Dubois mocked the new building as a cross between a hedgehog and a church organ.

When the explorer René Caillié saw the earlier mosque in 1828, it was half-abandoned and home to thousands of nesting swallows.

In 1930 a cement replica, the Missiri mosque, was built in Fréjus in southern France for West African colonial troops.

After 75 mm of rain fell in a single day in November 2009, the top of the southern tower collapsed and had to be rebuilt.

The mosque appears on Mali's coat of arms and is a Wonder in the strategy games Civilization V and Age of Empires II and IV.

Why it is worth it

This is the largest mud-brick building on Earth, raised on a platform above the Bani River floodplain to keep it above the annual floodwaters. Its present form dates to a 1907 reconstruction, built on foundations going back to the 13th century. The walls are built from banco — a mix of clay, water, shea butter, baobab powder and rice husks — and the wooden beams (toron) bristling from every surface aren't decorative flourishes; they double as the scaffolding masons stand on to reach the upper walls during repairs.

Because mud walls of this size cannot survive an unrepaired rainy season, the whole town turns out every April for the crépissage: women and girls haul water from the river to mix fresh clay, men and boys climb the walls to trowel it on, and griots — traditional musicians and storytellers — perform for the workers throughout the one-day event. It functions as much as a communal festival as a maintenance job, and it's the reason the mosque has survived, largely unchanged in form, for well over a century.

The mosque's interior has not always been open to outsiders. In 1996, local imams gave permission for a French Vogue fashion shoot inside — which turned out to involve models in negligees along with wine and cigarettes on the sacred site. The resulting anger in Djenné led to a ban on non-Muslims entering the mosque's interior that has remained in place ever since; visitors today can admire it only from the outside.

Good to know

Non-Muslims are not permitted inside the mosque; it can only be viewed and photographed from the surrounding square and streets.

Best time to visit

April, if your trip can align with the crépissage restoration festival.

Getting there

Located in Djenné. Mopti Airport (MZI) is about 85 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Great Mosque of Djenné in the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style is the largest adobe brick building in the world. The mosque is located in the city of Djenné, Mali, on the flood plain of the Bani River. The first mosque on the site was built around the 13th century, but the current structure dates from 1907. As well as being the centre of the community of Djenné, it is one of the most famous landmarks in Africa. Along with the "Old Towns of Djenné", it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.

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