"Timbuktu is called the City of Mysteries. It's the city where salt comes from the north, gold comes from the south and money comes from the west. But real hospitality is only found in Timbuktu."

The ancient city of Timbuktu is famous for being in the middle of nowhere – which is not quite fair, because it’s in the middle of Mali. But it is remote, and surrounded by desert.

Six hundred years ago, Timbuktu was a mighty city. The city lay at the cross-roads of the main Saharan trade routes and its merchants grew rich from the transport of gold, ivory, salt and slaves from West Africa to the Mediterranean.

Great mosques, universities, schools and libraries were built. They were important centres of learning for much of the Muslim world, and people travelled from as far away as Saudi Arabia to study there. The 15th century Sankoré Mosque and university alone had 25,000 students. Some of the ancient buildings are still visible today. By the sixteenth century, Timbuktu had become legendary in the European imagination, representing all the wealth of Africa.