Why it looks like this

Osei Tutu founded Kumasi as the Ashanti capital in the late 17th century, and the city has never stopped being the kingdom's heart: the Asantehene's Manhyia Palace still stands here, and the empire's roads ran out from Kumasi to its provinces — a radial pattern the modern road map inherited.

At the hub sits Kejetia/Adum, the commercial core, where the vast Kejetia market — tens of thousands of stalls — spreads beside the old colonial fort. The British burned parts of the city in the 1874 war, but Kumasi rebuilt and grew into Ghana's garden-city second capital.