Palais de Marbre, Official residence in Ngaliema, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Palais de Marbre is a white two-storey building on a hill in Ma Campagne, Ngaliema. Its left side has a flat-roofed portico with two square white columns and a wood-panelled ceiling over glazed double doors, reached by broad white steps. The right upper storey has a pitched roof edge lined with dark wood and two small paned windows. A low wall of irregular dark stone fronts the paved ground. The palace was designed with a circular layout and imported Italian marble.

Albert Ndele Bamu, governor of the National Bank of the Congo, commissioned the palace in 1970 as his official residence on the Binza hills; Eugène Palumbo and Fernand Tala N'Gai designed it. After Ndele's 1971 dismissal, President Mobutu Sese Seko confiscated it and turned it into one of his palaces and a guesthouse; Henry Kissinger stayed there in April 1976. Laurent-Désiré Kabila made it his residence in 1997 and was assassinated there on 16 January 2001.

The two annual open days, 16 and 17 January, are the national "days of the martyrs": 17 January marks Patrice Émery Lumumba, killed in Lubumbashi in 1961, and 16 January marks Laurent-Désiré Kabila, shot at the palace in 2001. Visitors file through the room where Kabila was killed, kept as it was, with the bloodstained armchair still in place.

The palace admits visitors only on 16 and 17 January, the national days of the martyrs, from 8:00 to 18:00. Soldiers posted at the gate usually ask about 1,000 francs per person. Only the room where Laurent-Désiré Kabila was shot is open, and thousands come each year, so arrive early.

The room where Laurent-Désiré Kabila was shot at close range is kept as it was, including the chair stained with his blood. Visitors also see photographs tracing his political career from the maquis to his seizure of power on 17 May 1997, and artworks made in his honour.