Koutammakou is the name of a large area of semimountainous country in the north east of Togo along the border with Benin. It is inhabited by the Batammariba
people whose culture, revolves around tall, mud tower houses called ‘Takienta’.

The beauty of these tower houses and their density has given them a high profile in west Africa where they have come to be almost as well know as the Dogon houses of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali.
The Tammari culture extends over the border into Benin. Within Togo, the nominated site covers around 50,000 ha and joins the border between Togo and Benin for 15 km.
The border thus cuts the overall cultural landscape area into two. No Buffer Zone is suggested as the large site is defined by natural boundaries to the north and south, the Atakora mountains and the Keran River respectively, and an international boundary to the east.
The Koutammakou as an evolving living landscape exhibits all the facets of an agricultural society working in harmony with the landscape and where nature underpins beliefs, ritual and everyday life.
The Koutammakou landscape exhibits the following qualities:
�� The Takienta tower houses as architecture
�� The Takienta tower-houses as a reflection of social structure
�� Farmland & Forest
�� Intangible associations between people and landscape
These are dealt with separately:
The Takienta tower houses as architecture
Mud building traditions are widespread over West Africa and there are many dozens of different styles of building reflecting differing cultural, social or agricultural systems, and the underlying geology and physical features of different areas.
The Takienta tower-houses, because of their dramatic ‘coalesced’ form that gives them what may be perceived as aesthetic beauty, have come to be better known than most.
In many parts of Africa houses consist of a collection of separate buildings within an enclosure with each building becoming in effect a room of the homestead. In
Koutammakou these separate buildings are joined to the surrounding mud wall. Furthermore the mud walls are built up in layers, which give them a pronounced effect of horizontal stripes. Some of the buildings have flat roofs; others are crowned with steeply pitched conical thatched roofs, which project above the surrounding walls. Many of the buildings have two stories. In the case of granaries their almost spherical form swells out above cylindrical
bases. The separate rooms house domestic functions, kitchens, bedrooms, store rooms, and also provide space for granaries and animal shelters. Because of their dramatic form, Takienta tower-houses have been widely photographed over the past 120 years. Some of these early photographs – not shown in the dossier – depict much larger complexes than exist today, with as many as twenty buildings making up homesteads compared with around eight now.
The Takienta tower-houses as a reflection of social structure Takienta tower-houses reflect the social structure of the villages: they are built to meet the needs of those living in them today. The houses themselves may therefore not be of any great age. However their form, and the techniques used in their construction, reflect a long tradition – perhaps extending back at least to when the Batammariba people are thought to have arrived in northern Togo. Villages
reflect clan allegiances with clans being associated with groups of houses, but also with ceremonial spaces, springs, rocks and sites reserved for initiation ceremonies. Within Koutammakou villages the houses are relatively widely dispersed. It is said that the distance between houses is determined by the flight of an arrow.
Just as houses are renewed, a completely new village may be created in response to needs of space or perhaps clan conflicts. New villages are modelled on the first village ‘Kuye’ created by divine intervention. To ensure that a new village is in harmony with its surroundings, a 14 sanctuary is first created for the ‘Dibo’ the natural forces of the landscape with whom the villagers must work. And lastly a central ritual Grand House of ceremonies is constructed with an altar and cemetery.