Royal Museum for Central Africa

The Royal Museum for Central Africa(RMCA) maintains film and photograph libraries and a large collection of maps and geological data.
Its zoology collection features a vast array of specimens of African fauna, while the Entomology Section boasts some six million insects.

The Museum also houses a magnificent collection of tropical wood, which is now the largest in Europe.

The Museum’s vast and varied collections were largely assembled during the periods of the Congo Free State (1885 to 1908) and the Belgian Congo (1908 to 1960). Military men, missionaries and merchants, colonial administrators, collectors and scientists laid the foundations of the present collection of the RMCA.

After 1960, most acquisitions were the result of scientific missions, specific purchases and donations. And now these items came not just from Congo but from practically every African country and island too.

A few impressive figures illustrate the wealth of the collection – not to mention the passion for collecting that was so typical of these periods:
- 10.000.000  animals
- 250.000  rock samples
- 180.000 ethnographic objects 
- 20.000 maps
- 56.000 wood samples
- 8.000 musical instruments
- 350 archives

The Royal Museum for Central Africa was created following the 1897 Brussels International Exhibition. For over a century, the Museum’s task has been to preserve and manage its remarkable collections, conduct scientific research and disseminate knowledge among the general public.
Today, the Museum also seeks to be a meeting place where intercultural dialogue and interest in contemporary Africa are encouraged.