What Travelers Say About Brazzaville
Brazzaville is the capital of the Republic of Congo, often called Congo-Brazzaville to tell it apart from its much larger neighbour across the river. It sits on the north bank of the Congo River, looking straight across the water at Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The two cities face each other from opposite banks, which makes them the closest pair of capital cities anywhere in the world. The river here spreads into a wide, lake-like stretch called Pool Malebo, and the Congo is the deepest river on earth, more than 220 metres in places.
The city was founded in 1880 by the French-Italian explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who gave it his name, and it grew into the capital of French Equatorial Africa. During the Second World War it briefly served as the symbolic capital of Free France. Next to the sprawl and noise of Kinshasa, Brazzaville feels calmer and more ordered, with leafy boulevards and an unhurried pace.
It is also the home of La SAPE, the Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People, whose members dress in immaculate, brightly coloured designer suits as a kind of living art and quiet point of pride. French and Lingala are widely spoken, the country runs largely on oil, and just beyond the city lies the Congo Basin, the second-largest rainforest in the world.