Maputo

Maputo is the capital of Mozambique, a port city on the western shore of Maputo Bay in the far south of the country. Until 1976 it was called Lourenço Marques, after the Portuguese trader who explored the bay in the 1540s, and its present name comes from the Maputo River. The footballer Eusébio, a star of Benfica and Portugal, grew up in the city.

The Portuguese built a fort and a trading post on the bay in the 18th century, trading ivory with the peoples of the interior. The settlement grew slowly until the railway to the gold fields of the Transvaal opened in the 1890s, and the port began to carry the trade of the South African interior. In 1898 it replaced the island town of Mozambique as the capital of Portuguese East Africa. It kept the title when Mozambique became independent in the 1970s, and wide avenues laid out in the colonial era were renamed after leaders of African independence movements.

The Port of Maputo ships coal, chrome and sugar from South Africa, Eswatini and Zimbabwe along the Maputo Corridor road and railway. Cervejas de Moçambique brews 2M and Laurentina beer, the second named after the old name of the city. Cashew nuts and prawns caught off the coast leave through the port for Asia and Europe.

Maputo railway station, finished in the 1910s, has a green dome and wrought-iron verandas, and its design has long been credited to the circle of Gustave Eiffel. The Iron House, a prefabricated metal building from Belgium, was meant as a home for the governor. The Fortress of Maputo, rebuilt in red sandstone in the 1940s, holds a small museum of the colonial era. The Central Market sells cashews, spices and fresh fish under a roof of the early 20th century. The painter Malangatana Ngwenya, whose murals cover walls across the city, lived and worked in Maputo.