At the Palais de la Marina in Cotonou, 27 returned royal treasures have spent much of their homecoming in reserve. The collection includes carved palace doors, royal statues, thrones, and the three-legged kataklè ceremonial stool, which Finland returned in 2025. When the stool arrived that May, Le Monde reported that it would join the 26 treasures France returned in 2021 at the presidential palace. The same collection drew roughly 230,000 visitors during its 2022 exhibition. Their permanent home has taken longer to materialize, with the Benin government identifying the Museum of the Kings and Amazons of Danhomè, known as MURAD, in Abomey as the eventual destination for the works France returned.
Between the homecoming ceremony and the finished gallery lies the part of restitution that receives far less attention, as objects move through storage, conservation, temporary exhibitions, royal institutions, construction schedules, and the much bigger question of who gets to explain their history once they are back in public view. For travelers who build trips around museums and cultural history, that unfinished process is already creating a new route through Lagos, Benin City, Cotonou, and Abomey, where returned artifacts are surfacing in very different settings and on very different timelines.
Lagos Has Become A Gateway For Returned Benin City Artifacts
Several of Nigeria’s most important recent restitutions have entered the country through the National Museum in Lagos, in the city’s Onikan neighborhood, before continuing to Benin City, where the bronzes’ history is rooted. The Netherlands formally handed over 119 Benin Bronzes there on June 21, 2025, after describing the restitution as unconditional and recognizing the works as loot from the British attack on the Kingdom of Benin in 1897.
Switzerland followed in June 2026 with 18 additional objects from museums in Zurich and Geneva. Under the plan announced by Swiss authorities, some are slated for display at the National Museum in Lagos, while most are heading to temporary storage at the Oba Ovonramwen facility in Benin City. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments also plans a dedicated gallery for recently returned Benin objects, including the Swiss and Dutch restitutions and works expected from Cambridge.
With the nearby John Randle Center for Yoruba Culture and History, Onikan gives travelers two distinct ways into Nigeria’s cultural history. A stop at the National Museum places the restitution story within the larger sweep of Nigerian archaeology and art, while the John Randle Center approaches cultural history through oral traditions, performance, architecture, and contemporary interpretation, giving visitors two very different models for how African institutions are telling their own stories.
Benin City Is Where Restitution Gets Politically Complicated
Public access in Benin City has already happened in flashes. During a November 2025 visit to the National Museum, the Financial Times reported seeing Restitution in Motion, an exhibition of repatriated works from Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States that included bronze heads, plaques, and a beaded ivory mask of Queen Idia. Bringing objects that had spent generations abroad into a public gallery offered one of the clearest examples yet of restitution moving beyond diplomatic ceremony and into something visitors could actually see.
Questions of ownership and authority now sit at the center of what happens next. A 2023 presidential declaration vested ownership and custodianship of returned Benin artifacts in the Oba of Benin, while a 2025 Reuters account details the palace’s approval for the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) to retrieve, conserve, display, and pursue the return of the works. NCMM Director General Olugbile Holloway framed the debate more broadly, telling Reuters, “It is about the dignity of our people and undoing the injustice of 1897.” The Oba is also developing a Benin Royal Museum, which is expected to eventually house some of the returned collection.
Those questions of custody also help explain why MOWAA, the Museum of West African Art, has ended up on a very different path from the one once envisioned. The museum was initially expected to display some returned Benin Bronzes, but those plans were shelved as authority over the works consolidated around the Oba of Benin. By the time protesters disrupted MOWAA’s November 2025 opening, the Associated Press noted that the bronzes were no longer slated for display there, while the Financial Times found that MOWAA had stepped back from any claim to restituted objects and was focusing instead on broader West African art, archaeology, conservation, and research.
Cotonou And Abomey Are Preparing The Next Chapter
Across the border in the Republic of Benin, the next phase of restitution is unfolding between Cotonou and Abomey. When Finland returned the kataklè in May 2025, culture minister Jean-Michel Hervé Abimbola described the moment as “the epilogue” before pointing toward “restitution, return and circulation.” Cotonou has already shown what that circulation can look like, with the Palais de la Marina hosting the major 2022 exhibition of returned royal treasures before the works went back into reserve there. Abomey is meant to provide the more permanent answer, with a museum under development to house and interpret the collection for future visitors.
Abomey’s more permanent answer is MURAD, the Museum of the Kings and Amazons of Danhomè, now under development within the wider royal palace complex. The returned works are expected to join a collection centered on the kingdom’s history, while visitors can already explore the UNESCO-listed Royal Palaces of Abomey, where courtyards, surviving buildings, and royal traditions provide the historical setting the new museum will eventually extend into its galleries.
For travelers trying to see the returned artifacts now, the answer depends on where they go. Recent restitutions have passed through the National Museum in Lagos, while Benin City gives visitors the closest connection to the bronzes’ royal and artistic origins, even as access shifts with questions of custody and display. In Cotonou, the Dahomey treasures have moved between public exhibition and reserve, and in Abomey, visitors can already explore the royal palaces while MURAD is being built to house the returned collection permanently.
Restitution may begin with an object crossing a border, but its real public life starts when someone can finally stand in front of it again.
