Hendrik Caerloff built the first timber lodge in 1653 for the Swedish Africa Company, called Carolusborg, after obtaining permission from the king of Fetu in 1650. English forces captured the site in 1664 and renamed it Cape Coast Castle. The article names no architect and no style. A 1664 account calls it a strong regular fortification with four bulwarks. Rebuilding from 1762 to 1773 added a western spur, a tower and new bastions, and the tower gained two stories in the 1790s.
The castle held enslaved Africans before they were shipped across the Atlantic. Its dungeon was cut into the rock and could hold about a thousand people.
Ghana's government restored it in the early 1990s. The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board cares for it, guided tours run, and UNESCO inscribed it in 1979.
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