Navrongo Basilica Museum

The Navrongo Basilica Museum is a small museum attached to the Old Navrongo Catholic Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, in Navrongo in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The cathedral is a large mud-brick building, 60 metres long and 14 metres wide, with a 13-metre-high central bell tower flanked by two smaller towers. The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board describes it as the last of its kind in Ghana and as a mixture of European architecture and local construction techniques.

The building's fabric is part of what a visitor comes to see. Its floor is made of compacted gravel, cowdung and dawa-dawa (yam bean), and its walls carry Nankani-Kassena imagery alongside Catholic symbolism, created by Navrongo women from 1973. The cathedral remains a place of worship, so the museum visit sits alongside an active church rather than replacing it.

The site's history is documented by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. Three missionaries — Father Chollet, Father Morin and Brother Eugene — arrived at the English military garrison of Navarro in April 1906. A first small chapel was built in 1907, followed by a larger community chapel in 1910, and the cathedral was completed in 1920. The parish became Mother Parish in Northern Ghana and attained cathedral status in 1934.

Inside the museum, a video walkthrough records exhibits of Kassena-Nankana material culture, including pots, calabashes and models of traditional architecture, along with items relating to the construction of the basilica. A tour guide opens the museum for visitors.

The Old Navrongo Catholic Cathedral building is documented by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board as a national monument, and the Navrongo Catholic Cathedral is inscribed on Ghana's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage nomination, submitted in 2000. The site lies in central Navrongo, in the Kasena Nankana Municipal District of the Upper East Region.