The remains of this Sierra Leone hotel symbolize Graham Greene’s ‘soupsweet land’
The City was once Freetown’s most storied hotel. It burned down in the early 2000s, a few weeks after British paratroopers fought off Revolutionary United Front rebels in a battle which helped bring an end to Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war. But the hotel had been on its uppers for a while before then. The Ferraris, a family of Swiss hoteliers, had long since abandoned it, and the City had become a brothel, where clients were serviced in dingy, candle-lit rooms. One correspondent who visited the site shortly after its destruction found a pile of rubble and a sign warning in Krio: “No piss ya.” Nowadays, there’s a scruffy Leonco gas station where the City once stood. On one side is Philton Guesthouse; on the other is Paty’s Beauty Salon.
