São Tomé

São Tomé is the capital of São Tomé and Príncipe, on Ana Chaves Bay in the northeast of São Tomé Island in the Gulf of Guinea. The town is known for tchiloli, a street theater in which masked actors in European court dress play a legend of the court of Charlemagne.

Portuguese navigators reached the uninhabited island in the 15th century, and Álvaro Caminha founded the colony of São Tomé in 1493. Its wet climate suited sugarcane, and the town grew as a port of the Portuguese Atlantic trade. A cathedral was built in the 16th century and largely rebuilt in the 19th, and it still stands at the center of the town. São Tomé became the capital of the independent republic in 1975.

Cocoa and coffee from the old plantation estates of the island, called roças, are shipped from the port of São Tomé. Claudio Corallo, an Italian grower, makes chocolate from the island's cocoa in his factory in the town. Fish caught by the canoes of the coast are sold each morning at the central market alongside breadfruit, bananas and palm wine.

Fort São Sebastião, built by the Portuguese on the point of the bay in the 1560s, now holds the São Tomé National Museum, with religious art, colonial furniture and exhibits on the cocoa trade. Pastel-colored colonial houses with balconies line the waterfront avenue. Ilhéu das Cabras, a small island offshore, has a lighthouse and coral reefs, and the forests of Obô Natural Park rise behind the town.