Attractions & Natural Wonders · Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso: Eight Attractions and Natural Wonders
Mud mosques with wooden spikes, a jagged range of sandstone blades, painted Kassena courtyards, and a stone enclosure whose builders are still debated
By Worldlore Editorial · 30 September 2026
A landlocked country of earth architecture
Burkina Faso ("land of upright people") is a flat, dry, landlocked country in the West African Sahel. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, and — the essential caveat for this article — one of the most dangerous to travel in: since the mid-2010s an armed insurgency has spread across much of the country, large areas are outside government control, and most governments advise against all travel to the whole country. The places below are described for reference and for a calmer future, not as a current itinerary. Overland travel outside Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso is dangerous, and any visit would depend on expert local advice on which roads and regions are usable.
The eight are spread from the southwest, around Banfora and Bobo-Dioulasso — historically the safest and most visited region — to the capital and the far south.
1. The Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso
Burkina's second city, Bobo-Dioulasso, has the country's most striking building: a mud-brick mosque of tapering towers and buttresses studded with projecting wooden beams (torons). It was built in the 19th century — sources differ on the exact date — as part of a pact between the king of Sia and the religious leader Almamy Sidiki Sanou. Dafra, a sacred pond whose giant catfish receive offerings, lies in the city's southern quarter.
Bobo is also a major centre of Burkinabè culture and music.
2. The Sindou Peaks
West of Banfora in the southwest, a chain of grey-and-ochre sandstone has been eroded into a serrated ridge of blades, cones, and arches — the Pics de Sindou. A path threads through and over them, best in the soft light of early morning or late afternoon.
Sindou is also the starting point for Mount Ténakourou, the highest peak in Burkina Faso.
3. The Domes of Fabédougou
Near Banfora, by the village of Fabédougou, the domes are a cluster of rounded, horizontally banded sandstone mounds, resembling a field of stone beehives. A scramble up between them gives a view over the surrounding Komoé valley.
They are usually combined with the Karfiguéla falls and Lake Tengréla, known for its hippos, which local people regard as sacred.
4. The Karfiguéla Falls
Outside Banfora, the Comoé river drops over a series of rock terraces into pools, about 12 kilometres northwest of the town — one of the country's most important tourist sites, fullest in the rainy season (June to September). A path climbs alongside the cascades to the calmer river above.
The wider Banfora area, green and watered by the river, is the most scenic part of Burkina Faso.
5. The Nazinga Game Ranch
Near the Ghanaian border south of Ouagadougou, Nazinga is a game ranch set up in 1979 by the Canadian brothers Robert and Clark Lungren, who built dams and reintroduced lost species; it became one of the easiest places in the region to see wild elephants — often coming to drink at the dams near the lodge — along with antelope, warthog, baboon, and crocodile.
Its accessibility from the capital made it Burkina's main safari destination, though the security situation has since affected access to the far south.
6. The Laongo Sculpture Symposium
About 30 kilometres east of Ouagadougou, a broad sheet of exposed granite has been turned into an open-air gallery: since 1989, a biennial international sculpture symposium founded by the Burkinabè sculptor Siriky Ky has invited artists to carve works directly into the rock, and dozens now dot the outcrops — faces, animals, abstract forms — weathering slowly in the sun.
It is an easy half-day from the capital, and one of the few sights close to Ouagadougou.
7. The Ruins of Loropéni
In the far southwest, towards the borders with Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, stand the laterite-stone walls of a large fortified enclosure, up to six metres high, at least 1,000 years old and which prospered from the trans-Saharan gold trade between the 14th and 17th centuries and was abandoned in the early 19th. Who built it is still debated. It is the best preserved of ten such fortresses in the area, and was Burkina Faso's first World Heritage Site (2009); the country now has four, including the W-Arly-Pendjari parks it shares with Niger and Benin.
Like much of the country, the region is affected by the insurgency, and access is severely restricted.
8. Ouagadougou
The capital, "Ouaga", is a spread-out, low-rise city best known for two festivals: FESPACO, the biggest African film festival, held every two years, and the SIAO craft fair. Its sights are modest — the Moro-Naba palace, where a short traditional ceremony is performed every Friday morning; the national museum; the cathedral; the big Ouagadougou central market — plus the monuments and roundabout sculptures along the main boulevards.
The painted Kassena courtyard houses of the Royal Court of Tiébélé, near the Ghanaian border and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2024, are another cultural highlight of the region when it is safe to reach them.
Burkina Faso was, until the mid-2010s, a friendly and rewarding introduction to West Africa. That is not the situation now: this article is a record of what is there, to be weighed against current security advice rather than acted on directly.