Kigali, Rwanda

Occupy a table at the most celebrated restaurant in Kigali, a rooftop terrace in the Kiyovu neighborhood where the kitchen produces a menu that treats the full range of East African and Rwandan ingredients as primary source material — brochettes of goat and chicken over charcoal, isombe cassava leaf stew with beans, matoke banana cooked in banana leaves, and the fresh tilapia of Lake Kivu prepared in the coconut and tomato preparation of the Rwandan lakeside tradition. The rooftop faces the rolling hills of Kigali from an elevation that captures the full panorama of the city's extraordinary topography, and the sunset from this terrace, watching the hills turn from green to deep amber as the light drops, is the finest dining moment available in Rwanda.

Enter the most culturally significant café in Kigali, a women's cooperative ice cream parlor in Nyamirambo that was established as a social enterprise and has become the most visited community business in the city. Inzozi Nziza means Beautiful Dreams in Kinyarwanda, and the ice cream — made from local Rwandan ingredients including passion fruit, vanilla, and the extraordinary coffee of the Rwandan highlands — is the most joyful and directly community-embedded food experience available in the city. The shop is located in the heart of the Nyamirambo neighborhood, the oldest and most culturally authentic district of Kigali, and visiting it is the most direct way to understand the social economy of the city.

Drink the finest cup of Rwandan specialty coffee available in the country at Question Coffee, a women's cooperative roastery and café in the Kiyovu neighborhood where the single-origin beans from the volcanic highlands of the Virunga and the Eastern Province are roasted on-site and served in preparations that document the extraordinary terroir of Rwandan coffee with scientific precision. Rwanda is one of the top five specialty coffee producers in the world, and Question Coffee is the most direct expression of that quality available in the capital. The café also functions as a training center and community hub for the women farmers who grow the coffee, making it simultaneously the best and the most ethically coherent coffee experience in East Africa.

Settle into the most reliably enjoyable neighborhood restaurant in Kigali, a Remera district institution where the menu is organized around the daily Rwandan home cooking that most visitors never encounter behind the hotel and NGO dining circuit. The brochettes are the finest in the city — charcoal-grilled goat, beef, and chicken skewers served with fried plantain, isombe, and the fresh avocado salad that appears on every Rwandan table in season. Repub is the restaurant that operates as the social center of the Remera neighborhood, attracting the teachers, engineers, and small business owners who make up the majority of Kigali's working population, and eating here is the most honest encounter with the city's daily social life.

Inhabit the most historically significant hotel in Rwanda, a property in the Kiyovu neighborhood that occupies the site of the former presidential residence and functions as the primary address for heads of state, cultural delegations, and the international community that makes Kigali one of the most diplomatically active cities in Africa. The Serena's gardens, the infinity pool facing the valley of the Nyabugogo, and the positioning at the center of the city's government and diplomatic quarter make it the most institutionally embedded accommodation in Rwanda.

Occupy a room at the hotel made internationally known by the film Hotel Rwanda, a four-star property in the center of the city whose swimming pool and colonial architecture carry the weight of the most significant moment in the hotel's history while continuing to function as one of the most comfortable and centrally positioned accommodations in Kigali. The Mille Collines is the most historically resonant hotel in Rwanda and staying here carries an emotional and historical depth that no other accommodation in the city can provide.

Settle into the most design-forward boutique hotel in Kigali, a property in the Nyarutarama neighborhood where the architecture references the Rwandan traditional aesthetic of woven grass, volcanic stone, and the deep green of the highland landscape in a contemporary vocabulary. The Manor is positioned in the most leafy and residential district of Kigali, within walking distance of the Nyarutarama golf course and the gallery and restaurant corridor that has developed along the northern ridge of the city, and staying here provides genuine access to the social world of the Kigali creative and diplomatic community.

Ascend to the most architecturally extraordinary lodge in Rwanda, a One&Only property on the edge of Nyungwe Forest National Park where the villas are positioned above a working tea plantation and the forest canopy of one of the oldest rainforests in Africa begins at the garden boundary. The lodge is three hours from Kigali by road through the extraordinary southwestern highlands, and the combination of the forest, the tea plantation landscape, and the chimpanzee tracking in Nyungwe makes this the most scenically complete Rwanda experience available. It is the ideal extension to any Kigali visit.

Enter the Kigali Genocide Memorial at Gisozi, where 250,000 victims of the 1994 genocide are buried and the museum documents the full history of the hundred days in which approximately 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed — the most concentrated mass killing in recorded history. The memorial is both a cemetery and an educational institution, and the experience of moving through the documentation of the genocide's causes, course, and aftermath before emerging into the garden above the mass graves is the most important and the most emotionally demanding visit available in Rwanda. It is non-negotiable for any serious engagement with the country's present.

Drive two hours north of Kigali to the Virunga Massif, the chain of eight volcanoes that straddles the Rwanda-Uganda-Congo border, and spend one hour in the presence of a habituated mountain gorilla family in their natural forest habitat at an altitude between 2,500 and 4,000 meters. The mountain gorilla permit is the most expensive single wildlife experience in Africa at $1,500 per person, and it is simultaneously the most extraordinary and the most directly conservation-positive wildlife encounter on earth — the revenue from the permits funds the ranger protection that has enabled the mountain gorilla population to increase from 620 individuals in 2008 to over 1,000 today. This is the primary reason most visitors come to Rwanda.

Walk the most authentic and historically embedded neighborhood in Kigali with a guide from the Nyamirambo Women's Center, a community enterprise that provides income and training to women in the oldest continuously inhabited district of the city. The walk passes through the markets, the mosque quarter, the tailoring workshops, and the local restaurants that define the daily social life of a neighborhood that predates the city's development as a capital and that maintains a social character entirely distinct from the NGO and diplomatic Kigali of the northern ridges. It is the most direct encounter with the living culture of the city available to a visitor.

Drive three hours southwest of Kigali through the extraordinary highland tea plantation landscape to Nyungwe Forest National Park, one of the oldest and most biodiverse mountain rainforests in Africa, where the chimpanzee tracking experience brings visitors to within meters of habituated chimpanzee families in their natural forest environment. Nyungwe is home to thirteen primate species including the black-and-white colobus monkey troops that number in the hundreds and cross the forest canopy in formations visible from the road below. The forest has been continuously inhabited since the last ice age and its botanical diversity — over 1,000 plant species — makes it one of the most significant conservation areas on the continent.