The Congo River's great bend — Boyoma Falls, Wagenia fishing rites, and the city Conrad called the Heart of Darkness
Kisangani is the largest city in northeastern DRC and the farthest navigable upstream point on the main channel of the Congo River — where seven cataracts (Boyoma Falls, the world's largest freshwater falls by discharge volume) mark the end of 1,700km of navigable river from Kinshasa. With around 1.5 million people, it is the DRC's third-largest city and the economic hub of the vast Orientale region. The Wagenia people have maintained an extraordinary system of wooden fish-trap scaffolding across the cataracts for generations — one of the most visually striking traditional fishing practices i…
Henry Morton Stanley established Camp de Stanleyville here in 1883 during his second Congo expedition, and the Belgians built it into the administrative capital of Orientale Province. Renamed Kisangani under Mobutu's authenticity campaign in 1966. The city witnessed some of the most violent episodes of post-independence Congo — the 1964 Simba rebellion, the 1967 mercenary revolt, and the 'Six-Day War' of 2000 in which Rwandan and Ugandan troops fought each other directly in the city streets during the Second Congo War.