MEMORIAL STONE SAVORGNAN OF BRAZZA

In the heart of Brazzaville, on the banks of the river where the French flag was planted to symbolise the treaty of friendship between De Brazza and King Makoko on September 10, 1880, the Congo pays tribute to its discoverer and coloniser Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. Designed by local architect Eugène Emmanuel Okoko, the circular neoclassical building combines marble and tinted glass, boasts columns and pediments, and is topped by a dome 12 m in diameter. The hall, which serves as an exhibition space, is adorned with a 15 m-wide fresco retracing De Brazza's journey through the Congo. A crypt houses the remains of the explorer and his family. The man who often said that "Africa would have a life of its own" arrives at the terminus he was hoping and praying for, after resting in Algeria. The project was born of a request and a meeting between Detalmo Pirzio Biroli, De Brazza's grand-nephew, and the Congolese authorities. The memorial plaque shows the venerable descendant dressed as an explorer, flanked by Gaston Ngouayoulou, 16^th King of the Batéké, re-enacting the founding meeting between De Brazza and King Makoko. Plans for a memorial and transfer of the explorer's ashes quickly took shape. The foundation stone was laid in 2005 by Denis Sassou N'Guesso, Omar Bongo and Jacques Chirac, and the memorial was inaugurated in 2006. At first, it was greeted with an outpouring of criticism: a lavish expense, an honour to the coloniser, but also, in a country where magic and religion are part of everyday life, a Masonic temple, a place for occult ceremonies... The memorial was shunned by the population: then, from exhibitions to educational efforts by the foundation that manages it, from school visits to press articles, the place found its place. The controversy has now died down. The fact remains that in a country without a national museum, where the slave route is marked by the foundation stone of a monument never built, the glittering edifice can, in form and substance, raise questions: the Congolese authorities do not seem insensitive to this observation, and a promise has been made that this mausoleum is only the first module of a more substantial cultural complex, the second module of which was inaugurated in 2021. It includes two libraries, an auditorium and an exhibition hall. Nevertheless, the exhibition's scenography is pleasant (if very basic), with some interesting films and testimonials.