The royal hut
Thick thatch, arched door.
Yakov Fedorov — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Yakov Fedorov — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Yakov Fedorov — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Yakov Fedorov — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Adygrafix250 — CC BY-SA 4.0
The King's Palace Museum stands on Rukari Hill in the town of Nyanza, the old royal capital of Rwanda. It shows two sides of royal life, with a huge traditional thatched royal hut and, close by, a palace built in Western style. Herds of long-horned cattle, raised here in the old way, bring the place to life. Nyanza was the seat of the kings in the kingdom's later years. The Western-style palace was built in the 1930s for King Mutara III Rudahigwa, the first Rwandan king to convert to Christianity. The hut is a reconstruction of the kind of royal house the kings lived in before that. The site became a museum and now comes under Rwanda's heritage body. The main building is a large round hut covered in thick layers of thatch, with a low arched doorway. Inside, a ceiling of woven fibre spirals up to the peak, above household goods and conical baskets patterned in black lines. Outside stand the Inyambo cattle with their enormous horns, and their keepers sometimes sing to them, as was done at the royal court. The palace has plain corridors and columns. It is about 58 km from Kigali in a straight line and about 25 km from the Ethnographic Museum. You may be asked to take off your shoes before entering the hut, and a guided tour explains what everything means. The site usually closes on the morning of the last Saturday of the month. Ask before photographing the cattle keepers.
Thick thatch, arched door.
Fibre spiralling upward.
Enormous horns.
Rukari Hill, Nyanza, Rwanda
It is a reconstruction of a traditional royal house, while the nearby Western palace dates from the 1930s.
A long-horned breed once raised for the royal court, shown here with their keepers.