Muramvya

Muramvya sits at nearly nineteen hundred metres on the road between the lake and Gitega, and it was the heart of the Burundian kingdom before the colonial capital moved away. What survives is not architecture. The royal ground here is a landscape of sacred groves, plantings of erythrina and ficus that mark enclosures, hilltops on the enthronement route and a river crossing the kings used. Kiganda nearby carries the memorial to the treaty that ended the kingdom's independence, and Mpotsa to the south holds the graves of four queen mothers. Nothing is ticketed, and access runs through local custodians.