Which Portuguese explorer reached the mouth of the Congo River in the 1480s? The answer is Diogo Cão.
Serving King John II of Portugal, Diogo Cão led voyages along the west coast of Africa in the 1480s. During his first expedition, probably in August 1482, he reached the Congo River’s mouth and marked the Portuguese claim with a stone padrão, a monument bearing royal symbols and inscriptions.
Cão explored beyond the river along the coasts of present-day Angola and Namibia, and he returned to the Congo on a later voyage. He sailed upriver as far as the Yellala Falls, where an inscription records the passage of his expedition. His voyages expanded Portuguese geographic knowledge and supported the crown’s effort to find routes, trading opportunities, and political contacts south of the equator.
The explorer is sometimes confused with later Portuguese navigators such as Bartolomeu Dias, who rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Cão’s achievement belongs earlier: he was a pioneer of Portuguese exploration in west-central Africa, not the navigator who opened the sea route around southern Africa to the Indian Ocean.