PОRТО-NEW, BENIN
Porto-New is the capital of Benin and the main port of the country in the Gulf of Guinea. The city also is an administrative and shopping center of adherent to it agricultural region. The population of capital is about 169000 inhabitants.
The first cramps about Porto-New concern the XVIIth century. It is supposed, that the city has appeared at the end of the XVIth century as the capital of the small African state. In the XVIIth century the Portuguese’s have based here the shopping center, and after that the city began to deliver black slaves for Boreal and Latin America. After the transformation of Dahomey into the French colony in 1894 Porto-New became its administrative centre. In 1960 the city became the capital of an independent state Benin.
In the city alimentary industry and fishery are advanced.
Here there are a presidential palace, a building of National collection, research institutes (including Institute of applied researches), the National library, the National archive, a botanic garden and museums among which the major place occupies an ethnographic museum.
The ancient cathedral constructed by Portuguese’s uses popularity of tourists as well. However the port of Cotonou is the biggest city of Benin (about 200 thousand inhabitants). The cities of Benin since long ago were the center of cultural life; here the basic educational institutions delivering skilled technicians to other countries of the Western Africa were situated.