Attractions & Natural Wonders · Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

The world's largest permanent lava lake, mountain gorillas in a park its rangers have died defending, an antelope-striped "forest giraffe" found nowhere else on Earth, and the second-largest river on the planet — against a backdrop of chronic conflict

By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026

A churning orange lake of molten lava at the bottom of a huge dark crater at night — The lava lake of Mount Nyiragongo in Virunga National Park — for years the largest active lava lake in the world. (Cai Tjeenk Willink / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0)

A note before anything else

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a country the size of Western Europe with extraordinary natural riches and a long history of violence. The east — where almost all the wildlife destinations are — has been fought over by dozens of armed groups for three decades; the conflict flared badly again in 2024–25, and Goma, the gateway city, has changed hands. Western governments advise against all travel to the east and much of the rest of the country. Virunga National Park itself has been repeatedly closed to visitors, and more than 200 of its rangers have been killed on duty.

This article is a record of what is there, for a calmer future. The ten below are the DRC's notable sights; whether any is reachable at a given moment depends entirely on the current situation, which must be checked with specialists.

1. Mount Nyiragongo

Two park rangers silhouetted on a crater rim above a glowing lava lake — Rangers on the rim of Nyiragongo. Climbers who reach the summit sleep in shelters overlooking the lava. (MONUSCO Photos / Wikimedia Commons)

Nyiragongo, a 3,470-metre stratovolcano just north of Goma, holds a churning lava lake in its summit crater — for many years the largest and most persistent on the planet. When it drains through fissures the lava moves fast: eruptions in 1977 and 2002 reached Goma and killed hundreds, and the volcano erupted again in 2021.

In the years the park was open, a strenuous day's climb led to overnight shelters on the rim, with the lava glowing red below all night — one of the great volcano experiences anywhere.

2. Virunga's mountain gorillas

A silverback mountain gorilla resting in dense green forest vegetation — A mountain gorilla in Virunga National Park — the DRC holds a share of the roughly 1,000 that survive. (Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons)

Virunga, Africa's oldest national park (1925) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protects the Congolese slopes of the Virunga volcanoes, where several habituated groups of mountain gorillas live. Trekking to them, from the Bukima or Rumangabo sectors, was the park's flagship activity when open — cheaper and less crowded than the equivalent in Rwanda or Uganda.

The park is also home to forest elephants, chimpanzees, okapi in its lowland sector, and hippos in the Rutshuru river, and it has pioneered hydro-power schemes to give local communities an alternative to charcoal from the forest.

3. Kahuzi-Biega National Park

A young eastern lowland gorilla clinging to vegetation in dense rainforest — An eastern lowland (Grauer's) gorilla in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, west of Bukavu. (Joe McKenna / Wikimedia Commons)

Kahuzi-Biega, near Bukavu at the southern end of Lake Kivu, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (currently "in danger") and the main refuge of Grauer's gorilla, the eastern lowland gorilla — the largest of the four gorilla subspecies, and one that has declined catastrophically due to hunting and mining for the mineral coltan. Habituated groups here have been visitable when security allowed.

The park spans a huge altitude range, from bamboo forest around the two volcanoes that name it down to Congo Basin rainforest.

4. Lola ya Bonobo

A bonobo sitting on grass, looking toward the camera — A bonobo at Lola ya Bonobo, a sanctuary near Kinshasa for the great ape found only in the DRC. (Christina Bergey / Wikimedia Commons)

The bonobo — the "left-bank chimpanzee", found only south of the Congo River, and famous for its peaceable, matriarchal society — is one of the DRC's flagship species. Lola ya Bonobo, on the outskirts of Kinshasa, is the world's only sanctuary for orphaned bonobos, most rescued from the bushmeat and pet trades, and it runs a release programme into a protected forest in the interior.

It is the DRC wildlife experience most travellers can actually reach, being a short drive from the capital and away from the conflict zones.

5. The Congo River and Kinshasa

A vast river at sunset with silhouetted boats and a wide, glowing horizon — Sunset on the Congo River at Kinshasa — the deepest river in the world and, by discharge, the second-largest. (Rahul Tilak / Wikimedia Commons)

The Congo is the defining feature of the country — 4,700 kilometres long, draining a basin second only to the Amazon, and navigable for a thousand kilometres of its middle course, where riverboats lashed with barges and floating markets take weeks to travel between Kinshasa and Kisangani. At Kinshasa the river widens into the lake-like Pool Malebo, then plunges through the Livingstone Falls rapids toward the Atlantic.

Kinshasa itself, one of the largest cities in Africa, is a sprawling, energetic place best known for its music (Congolese rumba and soukous) and its street style (the dandy sapeurs).

6. Lake Kivu

A calm lake ringed by green hills under a wide sky — Lake Kivu at Goma, on the border with Rwanda, below the Virunga volcanoes. (Sascha Grabow / Wikimedia Commons)

Lake Kivu, on the Rwandan border, is one of the African Great Lakes — a deep, island-dotted body of water in a dramatic setting between mountains, with the Virunga volcanoes at its northern end. The lakeshore towns of Goma and Bukavu, and the peninsula of the Nyiragongo lava fields, front it.

Kivu is also one of three "exploding lakes" in the world, holding vast quantities of dissolved methane and carbon dioxide deep in its waters — a hazard and, increasingly, an energy resource extracted for power.

7. Zongo Falls

A powerful waterfall crashing over a rock face into a misty gorge surrounded by forest — Zongo Falls on the Inkisi river, about 130 km southwest of Kinshasa, dropping 65 metres. (MONUSCO Photos / Wikimedia Commons)

The Inkisi river drops around 65 metres over the Zongo Falls, a broad forest cascade a few hours' drive southwest of Kinshasa — one of the few natural sights in the country that has been consistently reachable, with a lodge above the falls and a path to the base.

It stands in for the DRC's enormous, largely inaccessible hydrographic wealth: the country has by far the greatest hydroelectric potential in Africa, most of it undeveloped, on the same rivers that make overland travel so hard.

8. The Okapi Wildlife Reserve

A dark brown animal with a long neck and zebra-striped hind legs, resembling a cross between a giraffe and a horse — The okapi, a close relative of the giraffe found in the wild only in the DRC's Ituri Forest. (k7hpn / Wikimedia Commons)

The okapi, striped like a zebra on its hindquarters but built like a small giraffe (its closest living relative), was unknown to Western science until 1901 and remains so elusive in the wild that few researchers have ever photographed one there. The Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering a fifth of the Ituri Forest in the northeast, protects the species alongside forest elephants, chimpanzees, and the Indigenous Mbuti and Efe peoples who have lived in the forest for generations.

The reserve has repeatedly suffered attacks by armed poaching militias, including a 2012 raid that killed several rangers and the reserve's captive okapi population — a stark illustration of how conflict and conservation collide here.

9. Garamba National Park

A herd of elephants walking across open savanna grassland — Elephants in Garamba National Park, a savanna reserve in the DRC's remote northeast. (USAID / Wikimedia Commons)

Garamba, one of Africa's oldest national parks, protects a rare stretch of open savanna in the northeastern DRC, near the border with South Sudan — a landscape more reminiscent of East Africa than the rainforest that dominates most of the country. It was once home to the last wild northern white rhinos on Earth before poaching wiped them out here in the 2000s, and its elephant population has been repeatedly targeted by armed groups, including cross-border militias, using the park's remoteness as cover.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site "in danger," Garamba remains one of the clearest examples of what sustained conservation effort is up against in this part of the country.

10. Boyoma Falls

Wide, powerful river rapids churning around rocky outcrops — The rapids of Boyoma Falls near Kisangani, a series of seven cataracts carrying the greatest water volume of any waterfall system on Earth. (Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons)

Boyoma Falls (formerly Stanley Falls), a series of seven cataracts spread over 100 kilometres of the upper Congo River near Kisangani, carries a greater volume of water than any other waterfall system in the world — the point where the navigable middle Congo ends and the river's descent toward the Atlantic begins. Local fishermen work the rapids using an ingenious system of wooden platforms and basket traps suspended over the churning water, a technique practised here for generations.

Kisangani itself, deep in the rainforest and reachable mainly by river or air, was the setting for much of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Belgian Congo-era river trade.

The DRC holds some of the greatest wildlife spectacles left on the planet, in a setting of persistent conflict that has kept nearly all of it out of reach. This is a country to follow from a distance, and to revisit only when the security picture changes in a lasting way.

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