Kampala is Uganda's capital, a sprawling, hilly, noisy city of around 1.7 million people a few miles north of Lake Victoria. Built across seven hills — the colonial-era joke that it was another Rome was taken seriously by town planners — it is the busy, matatu-clogged hub of a country that has rebuilt itself from the wreckage of Idi Amin's rule and the decades of civil war that followed.
The city has a handful of sights worth a morning each. The Kasubi Tombs, burial place of the Buganda kings, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (rebuilt after a 2010 fire) and a window into the pre-colonial kingdom that still dominates life in central Uganda. The Kabaka's Palace and the haunting Idi Amin torture chambers in the old military compound beneath it give a sobering counterweight. The Uganda Museum in Kamwokya is a slightly dusty but fascinating collection of ethnographic and musical-instrument displays from across the country, and the Ndere Cultural Centre is the best place to see traditional Ugandan music and dance performed well.
The hilltop Uganda National Mosque — still widely known as the Gaddafi Mosque — offers the best panoramic views in the city from its minaret. The rival cathedrals of Rubaga and Namirembe face each other from their respective hills, a reminder of the Catholic-Anglican missionary competition that shaped modern Uganda. Further out, the serene Bahá'í House of Worship on Kikaya Hill is one of only eight such temples in the world.
Most travellers use Kampala as a one- or two-day stop before heading out to the national parks of the west and south (Bwindi, Queen Elizabeth, Murchison Falls) for gorilla trekking and safaris. But spend a night in the city itself — the food is lively, the markets are a spectacle, and the Ugandans you meet will be among the friendliest on the continent.