Pilgrimage Sites in Angola

In 1599 Portuguese soldiers and missionaries raised a small church on the bank of the Kwanza, Angola's greatest river, named it for Our Lady of the Conception and placed an image of the Virgin inside. Angolans call her Mamã Muxima — Mother of the Heart. More than two million pilgrims make the 130-kilometre journey from Luanda each year to pray before that image at Muxima.

The village lies in the Municipality of Quiçama, in Bengo Province, where the Kwanza curves through tropical vegetation. In Kimbundu, muxima means "heart," and the name marks the shrine's place at the centre of the region. The church and the neighbouring 16th-century fortress are both classified National Monuments and stand on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List — a pilgrimage complex unlike any other in sub-Saharan Africa.