World Monuments Fund (WMF) and Google Arts & Culture have partnered to launch The Black Atlantic, a collection of exhibits that showcase five of our current and former Watch sites connected to Black history. Spanning three continents and over 400 years, these sites exemplify how cultural heritage bears witness to enduring ties between Africa and its diasporic communities around the world. They also explore a broad variety of media, from traditional earthen architecture to avant-garde murals.
In the stories below, explore videos, interviews, archival photographs, and interactive 360° views that showcase the richness of these places and the vital importance of protecting them.
Africatown, USA
The residents of this historic Black community in Alabama are working to preserve their home’s unique heritage while ensuring that the benefits that tourism brings are sustainable and equitably distributed.
Alabama Civil Rights Sites, USA
Across the state of Alabama, homes, churches, and other places of civic engagement served as crucial organizing spaces for activists during the civil rights movement.
Alcântara and Rocha do Conde d'Óbidos Maritime Stations, Portugal
Lisbon's modernist Maritime Stations are home to bold murals painted in the 1940s by Afro-Portuguese artist José de Almada Negreiros that celebrate the working-class people of the dockyards and subtly pushed back against the authoritarian regime of the time.
Asante Traditional Buildings, Ghana
Sacred earthen shrines, among the last architectural vestiges of the Kingdom of Asante, face ongoing deterioration that call for new approaches to management and maintenance.
Bunce Island, Sierra Leone
Home to a fort that played a major role in the trafficking of enslaved West Africans to North America, Bunce Island is a testimony to a transformative and traumatic period in local history and a standing monument to Africa’s intersection with the U.S.