Ethnographic Museum of Rwanda (National Museum of Rwanda)

The National Museum of Rwanda is located in Butare Town about 130km south of Kigali Capital City. It was built in the late 1980s. In 1989, the Belgium government donated the museum. Its design and concept was realized in co-operation with the Royal Museum for Central Africa of Tervuren, Belgium.

The museum surprisingly remained untouched during the 1994 civil war. It houses information on the cultural history of Rwanda and the region boasting as the best ethnographic museum of East Africa that reflects how the East African kingdoms first came into contact with Europeans.

The Museum occupies over 20 hectares of land. The buildings only take up to 9 000 square metres of land while the rest of the land is occupied with gardens that have indigenous vegetation and the traditional craft training centre. Room number seven of the museum unveils pre-historic knowledge and presents the chronology of the Kings, properties of metals and their alloys, traditional religious practices, marriage and indigenous music collections.

The museum is open to members of the public daily from 08h00am until 18h00pm.