Butare Town

This is the intellectual town in Rwanda. Butare was the largest and most important city in Rwanda prior to 1965 when it lost out to more centrally located Kigali. Butare is located in the Southern Province of Rwanda and capital of Huye district. It was the capital of the former Butare Province, Rwanda, that was dissolved on January 1, 2006. It was the formal colonial capital of Rwanda.

Top Attractions

It has an impressive royal palace as well as an absorbing national museum.

Today the site of several academic institutions, including the country’s largest university, Butare is still considered the intellectual and cultural pulse of Rwanda. It is also an attractively compact and sedate town of shady avenues emanating from a main street lined with comfortable small hotels and breezy terrace restaurants.

Butare National Museum

The most prominent tourist attraction in Butare is the superb National Museum, which houses perhaps the finest ethnographic collection in East Africa. Absorbing displays of traditional artefacts are illuminated by a fascinating selection of turn-of-the-century monochrome photographs, providing insight not only into pre-colonial lifestyles, but also into the subsequent development of Rwanda into a modern African state.

Royal Palace at Nyanza

The cultural significance of Butare is further underlined by a visit to nearby Nyabisinu, formerly known as Nyanza, the traditional seat of Rwanda’s feudal monarchy. The impressive Royal Palace at Nyanza, an enormous domed construction made entirely of traditional materials, has been painstakingly restored to its 19th century state and is now maintained as a museum.