Maputo City Tour

The day

We meet at the white cathedral on Independence Square, at the hour that suits you, and spend three hours on foot in the Baixa, the downtown where Lourenço Marques began and then grew fast once the railway reached South Africa. On the square stand the cathedral of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, the town hall and the statue of Samora Machel, the first president. A few steps away are the Franco-Mozambican Cultural Centre, one of the busiest stages in town, and the Iron House, the prefabricated metal house credited to Gustave Eiffel. Tunduru Gardens bring shade and a colony of fruit bats, and the Central Market brings local fruit, which you get to taste. We pass the city's first mosque on the way to the CFM railway station, often listed among the most beautiful in the world, where parts of Blood Diamond were filmed, and to Rua do Bagamoyo, the old port street. The walk ends at the fortress of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, with its military statues and the tomb of Ngungunhane, the last emperor of Gaza.