Day 2 – Exploring Antananarivo (Tana)

By Paul S Bryers, July 18, 2026

We started the day at 8 am with a presentation by national TV anchor Sibella Randriamazava, followed by a Q&A.

Ms Randriamazava was quite up front about the political instability of her country since the September 2025 uprising by its Gen Z population.

Still, she held out hope that the September 2027 presidential elections will go ahead, and that the country’s desperate need for stable water and electricity – and for a more democratic government – will win through.

We then set off in our trusty wee bus for the top of the ridge about the city….

…..and then onto Ambohipotsy Memorial Church. It stands on the spot where Rasalama, the first Malagasy Christian martyr, was speared to death in 1837, and was built by the London Missionary Society’s architect James Sibree – an Englishman, as it happens – opening in 1868.

The church looks much like a Scottish Protestant kirk – neither the cold white of a Free Presbyterian church nor the gauche, unseemly richness of a Catholic one. Just good stone and wood, plain windows, hard pews and a sensible organ.

Our guide mentioned a striking survival of older belief alongside the Christian faith: famadihana, the “turning of the bones.” Some Malagasy families – Christians among them – exhume their dead after a year or so, wrap them in fresh shrouds, keep them at home for a few days, and then return them to the tomb.

Standing in a kirk raised over a martyr’s grave, it was a good reminder of how thoroughly the old and the new are interleaved here.

We moved on to the Queen’s Palace (Manjakamiadana), high on the same ridge. The original was a wooden palace (beautiful mahogany), built for Queen Ranavalona I around 1839 by the Frenchman Jean Laborde; it was James Cameron – the Scotsman who introduced the mud brick to Madagascar – who encased it in stone in 1869 for Ranavalona II.

The whole Rova was gutted by fire in 1995, leaving only Cameron’s stone shell; the restoration was completed only at the end of 2025, when the palace reopened, newly renamed Rovan’i Madagasikara – so what we walked through is very nearly brand new.

It offers magnificent views over the city some 600 feet below:

• Lake Anosy, dug by Cameron in the shape of a heart, with a memorial on its central island – the “Black Angel,” a French monument of 1927 to the Malagasy who died in the First World War;

• National football stadium.

Before leaving the palace we took a group photo – what a handsome bunch!

Then the Fiangonana — the royal chapel within the Rova (fiangonana is simply the Malagasy word for “church”).

For lunch I had lobster with vanilla flambé – a spectacular production….and spectacular flavours.

We had a quick meander through the National Photography museum – it was OK.

Surprisingly, we spotted a Madagascar blue pigeon – unusual to see these in the city. The plumage of this species is dominated by shades of blue, as the name suggests; the neck and throat are silvery blue-grey and the plumes are filamentous, the upper parts are silvery-grey, and the breast blue-grey going to deep blue on the belly. The tail is deep red, and the head is blue with a large red patch of bare skin around the yellow eye. The feet are red and the small bill is greenish with a yellow tip.

After this excitement, we trotted off to Tana market – huge, endless stuff, very, very busy.

One more custom our guide described, which I’ll set down for the record: in the traditional circumcision rite (famorana, or didim-poitra), the removed foreskin is ceremonially swallowed by the maternal grandfather or uncle, typically wrapped in or taken with a piece of banana. I’ll just leave that there.

We had cocktails in the Radisson Roof Bar and then dinner in their restaurant. Dinner was nothing special but OK.

We head out to pick up our jeeps and to head to the Rain Forest at 7.30 am tomorrow.