The remains of this Sierra Leone hotel symbolize Graham Greene’s ‘soupsweet land’
From our US edition
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.
