The town of Mban­za Kon­go, locat­ed on a plateau at an alti­tude of 570 m, was the polit­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al cap­i­tal of the King­dom of Kon­go, one of the largest con­sti­tut­ed states in South­ern Africa from the 14th to 19th cen­turies. The his­tor­i­cal area grew around the roy­al res­i­dence, the cus­tom­ary court and the holy tree, as well as the roy­al funer­al places. When the Por­tuguese arrived in the 15th cen­tu­ry they added stone build­ings con­struct­ed in accor­dance with Euro­pean meth­ods to the exist­ing urban conur­ba­tion built in local mate­ri­als. Mban­za Kon­go illus­trates, more than any­where in sub-Saha­ran Africa, the pro­found changes caused by the intro­duc­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty and the arrival of the Por­tuguese into Cen­tral Africa.