Kampala's art scene runs on two currents: the Buganda kingdom's living court culture on the western hills, and a contemporary gallery circuit filling converted houses in Kamwokya and Kabalagala. Three days covers both, plus drums after dark.
East Africa's most commercially serious contemporary gallery, running since 2002 from a converted house off Kira Road. Rotating solo shows by Ugandan painters such as Ronex Ahimbisibwe and Stacey Gillian Abe, with a print archive upstairs.
Multidisciplinary studio-gallery of artist and designer Samson Ssenkaaba (Xenson): installation work, barkcloth fashion and street-art canvases in a raw concrete space that doubles as a venue for launches and spoken-word nights.
Gaddafi-funded and completed in 2007, seating 15,000 on the hill where Lugard built his fort. The ticket covers a guide, a headscarf loan and the 272-step minaret climb for a 360-degree read of all seven hills and the lake beyond.
Consecrated 1919, the fourth church on this hill after fire, lightning and termites took the first three. Red-brick Anglican dome, Buganda kingdom graves in the yard and a west-facing terrace that catches the sun going down over Mengo.
The university's 1960s gallery, now part of the Institute of Heritage Conservation and Restoration, holds the Margaret Trowell School collection — the founding canvases of Ugandan modernism by Gregory Maloba, Sam Ntiro and Jak Katarikawe.
The Buganda parliament of 1953, facing the Kabaka's palace down a dead-straight ceremonial road planted with 52 trees for the 52 clans. Only the king travels the centre lane; the drum-shaped chamber inside seats the clan heads.
The walled royal compound, seat of Buganda since 1885 and empty of royals since Obote's 1966 assault. Guides walk you through Idi Amin's underground armoury turned torture cells, where prisoners' messages are still scratched into the walls.
The Ndere Troupe performs the full spread of Ugandan dance — Baganda court drumming, Acholi bwola, Karamojong leaping — with running commentary explaining which region each piece belongs to, on an open-air amphitheatre stage.
Uganda's independent centre for experimental practice: artist studios, a residency programme and East Africa's only open contemporary art library, housed in a purpose-built rammed-earth building. Exhibitions turn over roughly monthly.
A former textile warehouse in Bugolobi turned maker campus: leather, ceramics, screen-printing and woodwork studios you can walk between while people work, plus a courtyard cafe and a shop stocking what the resident designers produce.
Roughly a hundred stalls of barkcloth, Ankole cow-horn work, banana-fibre dolls and beaten-bark bags. Most vendors are the makers or their families, so ask who cut the horn — the answer is usually two stalls along.
The 1959 theatre on De Winton Road stages Luganda comedy troupes, Friday drama and the long-running Monday-night drum and dance jam in the forecourt, where students and professional players trade rhythms until late.