Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove
Osun-Osogbo Grove
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The Osun-Osogbo Festival is believed to have been celebrated for more than 700 years.
- Each festival opens with Iwopopo, a ritual cleansing of the town, followed a few days later by the lighting of a sixteen-point lamp said to be 500 years old.
- During the Iboriade ceremony, the crowns of past kings of Osogbo are brought together to receive blessings.
- Thanks largely to Susanne Wenger's campaigning, the grove was declared a Nigerian national monument in 1965, forty years before UNESCO listed it.
- Wenger first came to the grove's shrines when an Osun priestess asked for help against termites and commercial interests that were destroying the sacred carvings.
- Many of the grove's sculptures are built of cement as well as wood, which helped them outlast the termites that had eaten the older carvings.
- Two of the largest works, the shrines to Alajere and Iyamoopo, rise about 20 feet and spread about 50 feet across at the base.
- Wenger was initiated into several Yoruba cults and given the chieftaincy title Adunni Olorisha; she lived in Osogbo until her death in 2009 at 93.
- Unlike traditional shrine art, the New Sacred Art sculptures portray not only the orishas but also scenes from the everyday lives of their followers.
Why it is worth it
The Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, on the edge of the city of Osogbo in south-western Nigeria, is one of the last of the sacred forests that once bordered almost every Yoruba town. Its 75 hectares of forest line the meanders of the Osun River and are considered the dwelling of Osun, the Yoruba goddess of the river itself. Scattered through the trees are shrines, sanctuaries and sculptures raised to her and to other deities, and in 2005 the grove was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
According to local tradition, a band of migrants led by the hunter Olutimehin settled by the river to escape famine, and the goddess appeared from the water to promise them protection in return for yearly offerings. That bargain is renewed each August in the Osun-Osogbo Festival, a two-week celebration that draws worshippers and visitors from across the world. Its climax is a procession into the grove led by the Ataoja, the king of Osogbo, and by the Arugba, a young woman of royal descent who carries the calabash of offerings to the river.
What makes the grove unlike any other sacred forest is its art. In the mid-twentieth century the grove was neglected — its shrines decayed and trees were cut and poached. The Austrian artist Susanne Wenger, who settled in Osogbo in the 1950s and was later initiated as a priestess, began restoring a shrine in 1958 and over the following decades worked with Nigerian artists of the New Sacred Art movement to fill the forest with hundreds of monumental sculptures of Yoruba deities. Their work protected the grove from speculators and turned it into one of Africa's most extraordinary open-air sanctuaries.
Getting there
The grove lies about 2 km from the centre of Osogbo, capital of Osun State. The nearest airport is General Tunde Idiagbon International Airport (ILR) at Ilorin, roughly 76 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Osun-Osogbo is a sacred grove along the banks of the Osun river just outside the city of Osogbo, Osun State of Nigeria.
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