From Colonial Grandeur to Urban Ruins: The Rise and Fall of Freetown’s City Hotel

Alphonso Lisk-Carew (1883–1969) extensively photographed the City Hotel during his career as a candid photographer. 

On social media platforms, expatriates and residents have recalled the City Hotel as the location where British novelist Graham Greene wrote part of The Heart of the Matter. 

Memories include Flash, the head waiter; Uncle Freddie (Ferrari), the Italian-Swiss hotelier; Aunty Fatu, his Sierra Leonean wife; a ceiling fan that cooled the restaurant; and waiters dressed in crisp white uniforms. 

One individual recalled accompanying her father, a medical doctor, on a professional visit to the hotel. 

Another user reported possessing an original sketch of the City Hotel by the prominent Sierra Leonean artist Hassan Bangura. 

Another user recounted exchanging British pound sterling at the City Hotel in the late 1970s, receiving a rate of two leones per pound at a location behind the Ministry of Finance building. 

By the time the City Hotel was demolished during the Sierra Leonean civil war, informal money changers at the site were converting American dollars into inconvertible leones. 

In May 1995, David Orr, writing for The Independent, described the City Hotel’s cash register as covered in dust, with empty shelves and nonfunctional fans. 

Orr reported that General de Gaulle stayed at the City Hotel during the Second World War, and that Queen Elizabeth occupied its best room in 1961, coinciding with Sierra Leone’s independence from Britain. 

Graham Greene recalled a "kindly sad Swiss landlord" from his 1948 stay. 

In 1995, Victor Ferrari, grandson of the hotelier and resident of the United Kingdom, inquired whether Britain would invest in the deteriorating colonial-era establishment on Gloucester and Lightfoot Boston streets. 

By this time, the hotel had ceased to serve as a gathering place for Connaught Hospital doctors and expatriates. 

There is no evidence linking Freddy Ferrari to Enzo Ferrari, founder of Scuderia Ferrari in 1947, nor is there detailed information regarding the Ferrari family’s acquisition of the building that Greene immortalized in 1948. 

At its peak, the hotel exemplified the architectural style of an 1880–1900 mansion, strategically located at a busy intersection in a segregated colonial city. 

Milton Margai, Sierra Leone’s first prime minister, once envisioned Freetown as the Monte Carlo of West Africa, supported by investment from the former colonial power. 

Scholars estimate the City Hotel was constructed in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, coinciding with the onset of colonial modernization.

In recent years, a 15-story building was inaugurated as the Freetown City Council complex. 

This structure occupies a site that many Sierra Leoneans recall as a symbol of deteriorating infrastructure within a postcolonial urban environment, situated in a port city historically defined by the presence of Government Wharf.

The construction of the Freetown City Council complex commenced in October 2017. 

Three years later, Korean engineers completed a 461-seat conference hall, equipped with its own power station and a parking facility for 100 vehicles. 

The project cost was estimated at $48,730,000. 

Media outlets, such as The Sierra Leone Telegraph, reported public debate regarding whether these funds would have been better allocated to essential services, including reliable electricity, clean water, improved sanitation, and employment opportunities for the city’s two million residents. 

In May 2010, BBC Radio 4 correspondent Tim Butcher photographed the site where the City Hotel once stood, observing only rubble. 

Butcher noted that through Graham Greene's works, the City Hotel became a literary motif representing the late colonial era, not only in Sierra Leone but throughout the British Empire. 

Greene depicted the hotel as a home for colonial officials in his 1936 travelogue Journey Without Maps, his 1948 novel The Heart of the Matter, and a 1968 essay. 

In 2023, the Facebook group Old Photos of Sierra Leone, composed of expatriates and European residents, shared recollections of Frederick Ferrari, the Italian-Swiss proprietor of the City Hotel, describing him as a kind man with a limp and recalling the hotel’s vibrant atmosphere and culinary reputation.

Some also referenced persistent rumors regarding Ferrari’s alleged Nazi affiliations. 

In the early 2000s, the Sierra Leonean government reportedly published a notice in the Gazette seeking Ferrari family members to resolve ownership of the building’s remains. 

Although the property was registered with the land registry, the government ultimately exercised eminent domain, and a court ordered the structure's demolition. 

The decline of the City Hotel was accelerated by a fire during the Sierra Leonean civil war. 

While some attributed the fire to insurgents, others believed it was caused by squatters using oil lamps and candles. 

In July 2000, James Rupert reported in The Washington Post that despite widespread destruction in Freetown, the hotel had remained intact until a fire destroyed it. 

Rupert identified Freddy Ferrari as the individual who managed the hotel during the 1970s and 1980s, overseeing its bar and hospitality operations. 

By 1980, the hotel’s clientele had shifted from colonial officials to backpackers and American Peace Corps volunteers, but the war eventually drove away even these guests. 

Ferrari died in 1992, after which his nephew Ibrahim Kamara assumed management. 

Kamara admitted to Rupert that he had never read Greene’s novel. 

When Rupert visited in 1998, Kamara highlighted the building’s deterioration, including a leaking roof, termite damage, and the presence of internally displaced persons. 

The hotel’s grounds were occupied by street vendors and informal traders. 

Kamara expressed hope that the hotel could be restored after the war, particularly the room where Greene had stayed. 

However, by the time Butcher arrived to photograph the site, the facade had been dismantled by laborers. 

Freddie Ferrari died in 1993 at age 78. His grandson, born in 1978, recalled that the first floor once served as his nursery.


Victor Ferrari stated, "The sad truth is, when my grandaddy died, it stopped functioning as a real hotel." 

Constructed in the nineteenth century at the intersection of Gloucester and Lightfoot-Boston streets, the City Hotel’s veranda and restaurant served as a central meeting place for colonial administrators, African journalists, and visiting dignitaries. 

Located near the Colonial Secretariat, the hotel functioned as an informal extension of government operations. Colonial officials, military officers—including Graham Greene during World War II—and contractors frequented the establishment for business and to exchange information. 

The veranda was a hub for early African journalists, and the Freetown press, including the Sierra Leone Daily Mail, regularly reported on events at the hotel. 

These publications contributed significantly to political consciousness and to the movement for independence, which was achieved in 1961. 

The City Hotel is prominently featured in English literature, serving as the main setting in Greene’s 1948 novel The Heart of the Matter. 

The building survived the colonial era but was ultimately destroyed by fire during civil unrest in May 2000 and subsequently demolished. 

During Sierra Leone’s transition to independence, the British architectural firm James Cubitt & Partners was commissioned in 1961 to design the Paramount Hotel, funded by the Colonial Development Corporation. 

At the independence celebrations, diplomats and heads of state were accommodated at the new Paramount Hotel on Tower Hill, near Government House (later State House), which had been constructed in 1913 for $32,000. 

These buildings were furnished with items produced on government timber plantations in Kenema, Eastern Province. 

The Paramount Hotel was part of Sierra Leone’s independence program, preceding the Colonial Development Corporation's cessation of operations in the country.