In northeastern Togo, Koutammakou is a living cultural territory shaped by the Batammariba, whose name is also rendered as Tammari. Its best-known buildings are takienta: compact earthen tower-houses that bring household life, storage, defence and ritual meaning into a single architectural form. The landscape is not an open-air museum; families still inhabit it and make decisions about how visitors may enter.
UNESCO’s property extends across northern Togo and neighbouring Benin. The Togolese part was inscribed in 2004; a major boundary extension approved in 2023 made the World Heritage property transboundary and brought its total area to 271,826 hectares. The designation recognises not an isolated building style but a relationship among settlements, fields, forests, springs, sacred rocks and places used for ceremonies.