Things to do in Pointe-Noire

Landmark · Centre-ville

The 1934 art deco terminus of the Chemin de Fer Congo-Océan, and the best building in the country — a great symmetrical facade built to announce that the line had reached the sea. The railway behind it cost thousands of Congolese lives to build, and the station is where that history is most visible and least explained.

Local tip: Go on a departure day, when it is a working station rather than a monument. Photograph the facade from the square and not the platforms or anything official-looking beyond them — the general rule about photographing infrastructure applies here as everywhere in Congo.

Nature · Western seafront

Kilometres of open Atlantic beach along the city's western edge, with the swell coming in hard and the sunsets doing the rest. It is where Pointe-Noire spends its Sundays: fish grills, football, families, and a line of bars that run late.

Local tip: Do not swim — the rip current here is lethal and it catches confident swimmers. Go late afternoon, eat grilled fish, walk, and leave the water alone. For actual swimming, head to the calmer beaches north of the city and still not alone.

Culture · Diosso, ~25 km north

A red-and-ochre amphitheatre of eroded cliffs above the coast — locally called the Congolese Grand Canyon — with the Ma Loango regional museum beside it, housed in the residence of the kings of Loango. The Loango kingdom traded on this coast for centuries, including in people, and the museum is the one place that tells that story on its own terms.

Local tip: Half a day, best in the dry season when the track is firm and the light is flat enough to see the colours. Go to the museum first and the gorges second; the museum makes sense of what you are then standing on.

Neighborhood · Tié-Tié

The city's biggest market and the dense, working quarter around it — fish, cassava, fabric, hardware, phone credit and everything else, at a volume and a price level the seafront never sees. This is the Pointe-Noire that the oil city is built next to rather than out of.

Local tip: Morning, with small notes and no watch worth taking. Take a Congolese colleague the first time — not for safety so much as for the prices, which are a different set of numbers when you are not alone.

Food · Côte Sauvage / Wharf

The row of open-air grills where the day's catch — capitaine, bar, dorade, prawns — goes straight onto charcoal with chilli and lemon, served with plantain or chikwangue. This is the single best thing about living on this coast and it costs a fraction of what the hotel restaurants charge.

Local tip: Pick the grill with the queue, ask the price before it goes on the fire, and order maboké if you want the leaf-wrapped version. Sunday afternoon is the moment; bring cash in small denominations.

Nightlife · Wharf / Centre-ville

The seafront quarter by the old jetty, where the expatriate bars, the Congolese ngandas and the live-music venues all sit within a few streets of one another. It is the most mixed nightlife in the country — oil crews, port workers, diaspora returnees and the city's own — and it is louder and later than anything in Brazzaville.

Local tip: Take a taxi both ways, agree the fare before you get in, and do not walk back along the beach in the dark. UK government advice about walking after dark and carrying cash is specifically about this city as much as the capital.