Things to do in Brazzaville

Landmark · Poto-Poto

A green-tiled parabolic vault thrown across the middle of Poto-Poto, designed by the French architect Roger Erell and consecrated in 1949 — an attempt at a genuinely Congolese modernism rather than a transplanted European church, and still the building Brazzaville puts on its postcards.

Local tip: Go at Sunday morning mass rather than on a weekday, when it is a working parish with a choir rather than an empty nave. Stand at the back for the acoustics; the roof does something to sound that photographs cannot carry.

Nature · Centre-ville / Mpila

The river road along the Congo, looking straight across roughly four kilometres of water at Kinshasa — the only place on earth where two national capitals grew up facing each other across a river, and the closest capital pair anywhere after Rome and the Vatican. Two countries, two currencies and two visa regimes, in sight of one another.

Local tip: Walk it at dusk when the heat drops and the far bank lights up. Keep the camera pointed at the water: the Beach, the port installations and anything with a uniform near it are exactly what you are not allowed to photograph.

Culture · Centre-ville

A white marble mausoleum opened in 2006 holding the remains of the explorer the city is named after, alongside a small museum. It is the most argued-over building in the country — a state-funded monument to a coloniser, built while the state was doing very little else — and that argument is the reason to go.

Local tip: Ask a Congolese colleague what they think of it before you visit rather than after. The answers are not uniform and they will tell you more about Brazzaville than the exhibits do.

Culture · Poto-Poto

Founded in 1951 by the Frenchman Pierre Lods, who taught almost nothing on purpose and let the painters find their own style — the elongated stick figures and hot colours that became one of central Africa's best-known modern schools. It is still a working studio, not a museum.

Local tip: Go on a weekday morning when people are actually painting, buy directly from the artist rather than from a gallery in town, and ask what the price is with and without a frame. Prices are negotiable and the conversation is half the visit.

Neighborhood · Bacongo

The southern quarter that gave la Sape its heartland: fabric, tailors, secondhand French couture and men who have spent a month's rent on a jacket and will explain why. The market itself is one of the city's biggest, loudest and most useful.

Local tip: Saturday afternoon, and go with someone. Bacongo is where you get clothes made — take a picture of what you want and expect two fittings. Carry small notes, leave the good watch at home, and negotiate everything.

Food · Djoué, south-west of the centre

The stretch of white water just downstream of the city where the Congo starts its drop to the sea — and where a line of ngandas grills fish over charcoal on a Sunday. This is the reason the Congo-Océan railway exists: past here, the river is not navigable to the ocean.

Local tip: Sunday lunchtime, order maboké and let it take two hours. Never swim — the current at the rapids kills people every year, and the calm-looking water above them is worse than it looks.