The house
The residence sits a few kilometres from Kigali International Airport and about 20km from the city centre. The government opened it as a museum as part of the wider effort around reconciliation and national unity, on the argument that future generations need to be able to see how the government of the period actually lived and operated.
The interiors are the point. Visitors get a fairly unvarnished look at the household of the president in the years before 1994 — the private chapel, the bar, the escape routes, the security arrangements — and the guiding is direct about what it all implies.
The aircraft
Part of the wreckage of the aircraft shot down on 6 April 1994, killing the president and triggering the genocide, lies in the grounds behind the house. It came down on the property. Whatever you have read about the competing accounts of who fired, standing next to the pieces is a different kind of information.
Where it fits
It is close to the airport, which makes it one of the few sites that genuinely works on a departure day. It also functions as a useful counterpart to the Kigali Genocide Memorial: Gisozi shows what was done, Kanombe shows who was running the state that did it. See Kigali and the city tour.