Yaoundé

Yaoundé is the capital of Cameroon, a city on a group of hills in the forested center-south of the country. Its name is a German spelling of the Ewondo people, whose villages stood on the site, and the hills around it gave it the nickname City of Seven Hills. Mount Fébé, on the northern edge, holds a Benedictine monastery with a museum of Cameroonian art.

The German explorers Richard Kund and Hans Tappenbeck set up a trading and military station here in 1889 to trade ivory and rubber with the peoples of the forest. Under German rule the station became the seat of a district and a base for expeditions into the interior. France took over the eastern part of Cameroon after the First World War and moved its capital from Douala to Yaoundé in the early 1920s. It became the capital of an independent Cameroon in 1960, and in the following decades ministries, universities and wide avenues spread across the hills.

Brasseries du Cameroun brews 33 Export and Castel beer at its plant in the city. Cocoa and coffee grown in the Centre region pass through Yaoundé on the railway to the port of Douala. The Mvog-Mbi market sells plantains, cassava, palm oil and the bush mangoes of the forest.

The Reunification Monument, a spiral of concrete topped by a pair of figures, marks the joining of the former French and British parts of Cameroon. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Victories, finished in the 1950s, is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Yaoundé. The National Museum of Cameroon, in the former presidential palace, shows masks, thrones and bronze work of the kingdoms of the country. The footballer Roger Milla, who scored for Cameroon at the World Cups of the 1990s, was born in the city.