Which national capital was called Léopoldville until 1966?

Kinshasa was the national capital called Léopoldville until 1966.

The city began as a trading post founded by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881. It was named Léopoldville, or Leopoldstad in Dutch, in honor of Belgium’s King Leopold II. The settlement grew beside the Congo River and eventually replaced Boma as the capital of the Belgian Congo in 1926.

After the country became independent in 1960, Léopoldville remained the capital. In 1966, President Mobutu Sese Seko renamed the city Kinshasa as part of a broader policy of removing colonial names and emphasizing African identity. The new name referred to an older local settlement near the modern city.

A common mix-up is with Brazzaville, the capital of the neighboring Republic of the Congo, located directly across the Congo River. The two capitals form one of the world’s notable paired urban areas, but only Léopoldville was renamed Kinshasa.