Things to do
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Inema Arts Center
Founded by two brothers in a converted house in Kacyiru, this studio and gallery gives working space to Rwandan artists and hangs their canvases across its walls and garden. Visitors can watch the studios at work, and Thursday evenings bring music and a bar into the courtyard. Art classes run for children at weekends. Most of the work on the walls is for sale.
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Kandt House Museum
German colonial rule left one building worth an hour in Kigali, the residence of Richard Kandt, the first colonial resident, now a museum of natural history and city history. Rooms cover pre-colonial Rwanda, the German and Belgian administrations and the growth of the capital, with a small reptile enclosure behind. Labels are in English and French. It sits within walking distance of the centre.
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Kigali Genocide Memorial
More than two hundred thousand victims of the 1994 genocide are buried in mass graves on this hillside at Gisozi, where the national memorial sets out how the killing was planned and carried out. The exhibition is unsparing and takes over an hour, with an upper floor on genocides elsewhere. Entry is free, an audio guide is available, and most visits run well past the hour planned for them.
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Kimironko Market
Kigali's main market fills a covered hall in the east of the city with produce, dried fish, secondhand clothes and bolts of kitenge cloth. Tailors at the back will run up a shirt or a dress within a day from fabric bought a few metres away. Bargaining is expected and opening figures run high for visitors. Mornings are cooler and less crowded.
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Nyamata Genocide Memorial
Thousands of victims were killed inside a brick Catholic church south of Kigali in April 1994, and the building has been left as it was found, with bloodstained altar cloth, a punctured roof and heaped clothing in the pews. Crypts below hold the remains. Guides are survivors and speak plainly. The drive takes under an hour, and the site asks for modest dress and no photography inside.
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Nyamirambo
The oldest quarter of Kigali, Muslim in character and lined with mosques, salons and grilled meat stands, stays awake later than the rest of the city. A local women's cooperative runs walking tours through its lanes, ending with a cooked lunch in a family house. Football on the street and tailors working outdoors fill the afternoons, and the brochette grills along the main road run late into the night.