Angola: Luanda – Agostinho Neto Mausoleum
Most communist and socialist regimes for some reason have an obsession of marinating and preserving their founding leaders in embalming oils and then storing then in elaborate brutalist-architecture mausoleums. Angola is no exception, and its founding father Agostinho Neto who was the MPLA leader and the first president of Angola is housed in a space needle mausoleum resembling an intercontinental ballistic missile. The monument itself is surrounded by huge landscaped plaza with additional socialist-themed monument – a sculpture of Neto with a kid, various symbols of historic struggle involving machetes and ak47s, as well as a kneeling elephant (a cute one) paying respect to the fearless leader (elephants were all but exterminated during the civil war between MPLA led by Neto and UNITA led by the savagely brutal Savimbi). No photography is allowed inside the mausoleum.
