Torkor Atorlia

Torkor Atorlia, whose name means "the fifth landing stage", is a historic site at Anloga in the Volta Region of Ghana. It formerly served as the highest seat of traditional justice for the Anlo people, and is documented as a communal area of the old Anlo Kingdom where wrongdoers were brought before community elders and chiefs to face judgment.

Accounts of the site's past are stark. According to Graphic Online, convicted hardened criminals in Anloland were taken there and buried to the neck after a fair trial in the highest traditional Anlo court; traitors and men who slept with other men's wives were also sent there. MyJoyOnline describes the place as an ancient form of punishment. Graphic Online states the site was established about 600 years ago.

Beside the site is a small pond used for purification rites by those who buried the criminals. It is reported never to have dried up even in prolonged dry seasons, and to be always covered with floating plants. Some trees that formed a wide canopy have been preserved over the centuries, and the site is described as serene, cool and breezy.

The setting is now urban rather than remote. Graphic Online places Torkor Atorlia close to the Anloga Police Station, Hogbe Park, a basic school, the Keta Lagoon and many houses. Anloga is described as the traditional capital of Anlo and the capital of the Anlo District.

Ghana News Agency reports a proposed Torkor Atorlia Museum and Tourist Centre intended to turn the site into a heritage, research and tourism hub, with a museum, library, conference hall, offices, toilets, stores, covered walkways, landscaped gardens, a car park and a corridor of sculpted busts of past Awoamefias, ending at the sacred pond used in post-judgment cleansing rituals. The project committee secretary said the land had been surveyed and the architectural design done, and that the committee was working to inaugurate the project soon.

Visitors should treat the museum and centre as proposed rather than open. No opening hours, entry fees, guided-tour arrangements or precise coordinates are established in the available sources, so those details should be confirmed locally before travelling.