Emir of Kano's Palace Gallery

The Emir’s Palace — Gidan Rumfa, built in the late fifteenth century by Sarkin Kano Muhammad Rumfa — is the oldest continuously occupied royal palace in sub-Saharan Africa, or claims to be, and the claim is not obviously challengeable. Its main gate is a red-brick tower with a pointed Moorish arch and crenellated battlements, a black flag flying from the top. Inside, the reception chambers are covered in polychrome geometric relief that covers every surface — walls, ceilings, door frames — in dense interlocking patterns of gold, red, green, and white.

The current Emir, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, appointed in 2020 after the deposition of his predecessor Muhammad Sanusi II, looks out from framed photographs mounted throughout the complex, always in white robes and the distinctive spread-topped turban of the Sarkin Kano.

In the reception hall, a barrel vault painted entirely in dense black-and-white geometric patterns — spirals, triangles, concentric forms — arches overhead with the authority of a cathedral ceiling applied to a visual language that owes nothing to Europe and everything to the trans-Saharan world of which Kano was, for centuries, the southern anchor. A man in white robes stood on the red carpet in the centre of the room. I did not ask who he was. Some presences are better left undisturbed.