A small island off the north coast that was the capital of Portuguese East Africa. Pottery says people were here by the fourteenth century, Swahili, with origins traced to Kilwa, and the name comes from Ali Musa Mbiki, a sultan here in Vasco da Gama’s time. The Portuguese built a port in 1507 and in 1522 put up the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, which is reckoned the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere. Fort São Sebastião followed in the sixteenth century and held off Dutch attacks in 1607 and 1608. Slaves, spices and gold went through here on the India route until the Suez Canal made the trip round Africa pointless; the capital moved to Maputo in 1898. About 14,000 people live on it, reached by a 3 km bridge built in the 1960s. UNESCO listed it in 1991.
Nampula, Mozambique
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