Mbanza Kongo

Mbanza Kongo, set on a broad flat-topped hill above the Luezi valley, was the capital of the Kongo kingdom. Its royal court governed a realm extending from the Atlantic coast into the interior, while provincial rulers maintained their own seats of authority. The city was already an important political centre when Portuguese visitors arrived at the end of the fifteenth century.

Christianity took root at the court after contact with Portugal, and Mbanza Kongo became known to Europeans as São Salvador. Churches and schools rose alongside the royal precinct; in 1624 a catechism in Kikongo was written at the Jesuit college. The city also stood within trading networks that carried enslaved people across the Atlantic, as well as goods and ideas between Central Africa and Europe. Civil wars followed the defeat and death of King António I at Mbwila in 1665. Mbanza Kongo was repeatedly attacked and abandoned in 1678. Followers of the prophet Kimpa Vita reoccupied it in 1705, and King Pedro IV restored it as the royal capital in 1709.