Brazzaville

About Brazzaville

Across a few kilometres of churning brown water, Brazzaville looks straight at Kinshasa: two capitals facing each other over the Congo River, closer than almost any others in the world. The capital of the Republic of the Congo is the calmer of the pair, a green, low-rise city of wide avenues, riverside gardens and lively neighbourhood markets.

It takes its name from the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who founded a post here in 1880, and it later became the capital of French Equatorial Africa. During the Second World War it served as a symbolic capital of Free France, and the 1944 Brazzaville Conference foreshadowed the end of colonial rule. Landmarks such as the green-roofed Basilica of Sainte-Anne and the marble Brazza Memorial tell that layered story.

Culture runs deep, from the Poto-Poto school of painting to the rumba bands that made the two Congos famous across Africa. Watch the rapids at sunset, browse the stalls of Marché Total, and travel north to see gorillas returned to the wild on the Bateke Plateau.