Wa Naa's Palace

Wa Naa's Palace, also known as Naa Yiri, is the traditional palace and official residence of the Wa Naa, the overlord of the Wala Traditional Area. It stands in the heart of Wa town, the capital of Ghana's Upper West Region, within Wa Municipal District. The palace is home to the Wa Naa's family, palace staff and officials of the kingdom, and it carries cultural, political, religious and social significance for the Wala people. It is gazetted as a national monument, and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board maintains a dedicated record for the site.

Architecturally, the building is an example of Sudano-Sahelian, or western Sudanese, mud-brick construction: sun-dried mud walls, Y-shaped wooden columns supporting flat mud-covered roofs, and a frontage of buttresses with pinnacles rising above the parapet. Reporting by Graphic Online describes the first palace as a Mole-Dagban round thatched cottage built in 1889, later rebuilt in western Sudanese style between 1919 and 1920 under Wa Naa Naa Yamusa Pelpuo III. The current Wa Naa is Wa Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV.

For visitors, the palace is a working royal residence and a ceremonial centre rather than a conventional museum. Its forecourt serves as the graveyard of past Wa Naas, and the palace is the venue for major traditional ceremonies, including Damba festival gatherings and the enskinment of a new Wa Naa. Because it remains an active seat of traditional authority, access is likely to be governed by palace protocol and the presence of the royal household; travellers should treat any visit as conditional on permission rather than assumed.

The World Monuments Fund worked with the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board on preserving the Y-shaped structure, a project begun in 2009 and completed in 2012. Wikipedia notes that few historic earthen buildings of this type survive in the Upper West Region, partly because of a shortage of skilled artisans able to maintain them — context that helps explain why the palace is regarded as an important surviving example of its architectural tradition.