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Mbanza Kongo, Vestiges of the Capital of the former Kingdom of Kongo
| Site number: | 1511 |
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| Type of site: | Cultural | |
| Date: | 14-19 centuries | |
| Date of Inscription: | 2017 | |
| Location: | Africa, Angola, Kongo | |
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Six official UN languages:
Chinese,
English,
French,
Russian,
Spanish
Other languages: Afrikaans, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean
Other languages: Afrikaans, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean
| Description: | The town of Mbanza Kongo, located on a plateau at an altitude of 570 metres, was the political and spiritual capital of the Kingdom of Kongo, one of the largest constituted states in Southern Africa from the 14th to 19thcenturies. The historical area grew around the royal residence, the customary court and the holy tree, as well as the royal funeral places. When the Portuguese arrived in the 15th century they added stone buildings constructed in accordance with European methods to the existing urban conurbation built in local materials. Mbanza Kongo illustrates, more than anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, the profound changes caused by the introduction of Christianity and the arrival of the Portuguese into Central Africa. --WHMNet's description is from WHC Site, where additional information is available.CC BY-SA 3.0. | |
| M'banza-Kongo (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐ̃ˈbɐ̃zɐ], [ĩˈbɐ̃zɐ], [mɨˈβɐ̃zɐ] or [miˈβɐ̃zɐ ˈkõɡu], known as São Salvador in Portuguese from 1570 to 1975), is the capital of Angola's northwestern Zaire Province. M'banza Kongo (properly Mbanza Koongo or Kôngo in most acceptable orthographies) was founded some time before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1483 and was the capital of the Kiluken19i dynasty ruling at that time. The site was temporarily abandoned during civil wars in the 17th century. It lies close to Angola's border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is located at around 6°16′0″S 14°15′0″E and sits on top of an impressive flat-topped mountain, sometimes called Mongo a Kaila (mountain of division) because recent legends recall that the king created the clans of the kingdom and sent them out from there. In the valley to the south runs the Luezi River. In 2017, Mbanza Kongo was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.England higher than 3,000 feet (910 m) above sea level lies within the National Park, including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. It also contains the deepest and longest bodies of water in England, respectively Wast Water and Windermere. --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. CC BY-SA 3.0. |
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| Source: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1511. Description is available under license CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 | |
| Source2: | Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.com). CC BY-SA 3.0. | |
| Reference: | 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1511). 2. Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. | |