28/08/2026
Latitude zero, road to the west, n°1.
The name ‘Libreville’ was first given to the village founded in 1849 to accommodate slaves freed from a Brazilian slave ship that had been boarded off the coast, at a time when the slave trade – formally banned since 1848 – was still continuing in the Gulf of Guinea.
The freed slaves were taken aboard and thus reached Gabon.
From then on, Libreville served as the starting point for the French colonisation of Gabon towards the end of the 19th century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Libreville became the capital of French Congo, before losing this status to Brazzaville in 1904.
It was from Libreville that many freedom fighters set out, joining Force L – which would later become the 2nd Armoured Division under the future French Marshal Leclerc – and made their way to Chad.
The column crossed North Africa to liberate occupied France in 1944.
https://s2gm.land.copernicus.eu/