Brazzaville

Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the closest pair of capitals on Earth, facing each other across the Congo where it swells into the Malebo Pool — and this is the quiet one, the left bank the size of a neighborhood watching a metropolis of seventeen million light up across the water every evening. No two charts in this atlas belong to each other like these two: each carries the other on its horizon.

The traveller takes the Corniche at six, when the river turns to hammered pewter and the far shore switches on; visits the Basilique Sainte-Anne, whose green-tiled lancet roof is one of Africa's handsomest buildings; calls at the Poto-Poto school, where a painting movement born in 1951 still teaches its bright, long-limbed style; watches the sapeurs of Bacongo turn Sunday into a runway; and eats river fish with saka-saka while the rapids growl downstream, where the Pool ends and the Congo drops toward the sea.

The Guide's practical counsel: Brazzaville is the gentle introduction to the two Congos — calm, walkable in its center, proud of its style —; taxis are green and negotiated; French and Lingala open the doors; and the famous crossing to Kinshasa is a real adventure that runs on paperwork — visa for the other shore arranged ahead, ferry from the Beach, patience as deck cargo. Done properly, you breakfast in one capital and lunch in the other, having crossed a border wider than most rivers ever get.