Limete Tower (Tour de l'Échangeur)

The Limete Tower, also called the Interchange Tower or the Tower of the National Heroes of Congo, stands in the Limete district of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was meant as a monument at the crossroads on the boulevard that links N'djili Airport with the city centre. The architect was the French-Tunisian Olivier-Clément Cacoub.

Planned under President Mobutu Sese Seko, it was to have four cylindrical reinforced-concrete columns and a copper spire. The foundation stone was laid on 24 November 1967 and building began in 1969, but work stopped by 1974 after 12 floors. For many years it stood unfinished, and later it was turned into a museum of contemporary and multimedia arts.

Why Mobutu built it

In 1966 Mobutu renamed the boulevard Boulevard Lumumba, and he wanted a monument to Patrice Lumumba at the crossroads to Limete. The foundation stone was laid by Julius Nyerere, the president of Tanzania. A Yugoslav company was to build it. The tower stands in a square that was called Exchange Square until 2011, when it was renamed Reconstruction Square.

A long wait

After construction stopped in 1974, the tower complex stood for many years as a 'white elephant', a costly project that is left unused. A statue of Patrice Lumumba was set up in the square on 17 January 2002. In 2010, under President Joseph Kabila, work began on the base and square, adding an amusement park, fountains and a performing arts venue at a cost of 11 million US dollars.

Museum today

The tower now hosts the Museum of Contemporary and Multimedia Arts, which has collections by Congolese artists and sculptors. The model's description says it reopened in 2022 as a museum and that it is 210 metres tall, with four columns that stand for the country's four national languages. These details come from the description, as the English encyclopedia article does not give them.

On the globe

The model shows the tall concrete columns rising to stacked platforms and a copper spire.