1500 Francs CFA Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus — built around 350 BC for the Carian satrap Mausoleus by his wife and sister Artemisia II — gave the modern word "mausoleum" to every language that borrowed it from Latin. It stood for roughly seventeen centuries before earthquakes and, later, the Knights of St. John systematically dismantled it for building material in the 15th century. The Ivory Coast has no historical or geographic connection to the site; this is a bullion-adjacent commemorative issued under licensing arrangements that allowed many small francophone states to produce oversized silver rounds during this period.