Independence Memorial Museum

What makes it special

Mansudae Overseas Projects, a North Korean firm, designed and built the museum in the North Korean socialist realist style. Out front, in the same style, stands a bronze statue of Sam Nujoma, Namibia's founding president, and it is a favourite backdrop for photographs.

The statue stands on the spot where the Reiterdenkmal, a German colonial equestrian statue, stood for 102 years. The Christuskirche, from the same German period, is its neighbour on Robert Mugabe Avenue.

Inside, the subject is the resistance to colonial rule and the struggle for independence, with one chapter to each floor. Colonial Repression, on the first floor, commemorates the early resistance leaders. Liberation, on the second, covers the South African Border War, and Road to Independence, on the third, follows SWAPO.

The story is told mostly in images, with photographs and captions carrying you from one floor to the next. One room on the route is almost completely dark, so give your eyes a moment to adjust before you move on.

Visiting

Start at the top floor and work down through the galleries. The lifts run up both outside walls of the building, and the fourth floor, the highest you can reach, holds the Windhoek Sky Restaurant.

The top gallery is a large collage that you look down on. Below it come Road to Independence, Liberation and Colonial Repression, so going down you meet the story from its end. Ride back to the first floor if you would rather read it in order.

Guided or on your own

Guided tours run through the museum, and you can also walk it on your own. The galleries lean on photographs more than text, so a guide helps if you want the people and events behind them explained.

Tips

For the sunset over Windhoek, come back up to the fourth floor once the galleries close. The restaurant stays open into the evening, so you can take the view with a drink.

Stop for your photograph of the Sam Nujoma statue on the way in, with the building rising behind it.