In the 1970s, President Mobutu Sese Seko, leader of what was then Zaire, spent £100m building a luxurious palace complex for himself at Gbadolite, the village his family came from.

Gbadolite is deep in the rain forest - more than 1,000km from the capital, Kinshasa.

The President's remote hideaway featured a vast swimming pool, a gold-topped fence and close by, an international airport big enough for Concorde to land.

When Mobutu was driven from power in 1997, the complex was ransacked by rebels and Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dan Snow made the two-day car journey to see what remains.

An hour long documentary, Dan Snow's History of Congo, will be shown on BBC Two's This World on Wednesday 9th October at 21:00 BST.