Ilha de Moçambique
Tailor-made holidays to Mozambique Island
If you're planning on staying on the north coast, it would be a pity not to pay a visit to Ilha de Moçambique (Mozambique Island). This small island reminds people in the know of they way Zanzibar was twenty years ago and the many cultural influences that have formed Mozambique are clearly visible here. The state of disrepair into which the once so magnificent architecture has fallen gave cause for UNESCO to declare the northern part of Mozambique Island a World Heritage site.
Old influences on Ilha de Moçambique
This island was the administrative and commercial centre of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique until the end of the nineteenth century, and before the Suez Canal was opened it was an important trading post for the Portuguese on their trips to India.
Vasco de Gama landed here at the end of the fifteenth century. Twenty years later the Portuguese built the Chapel of Nosso Senhora de Baluarte, which is the oldest existing European building in the southern hemisphere. The chapel is located just outside the slightly younger 12-metre-high Fort São Sebastião, which even the Dutch were unable to seize.
Most of the island consists of narrow streets that run between high buildings, prepossessing churches, a busy port and a market. The seventeenth-century São Paulo Palace is now a colonial museum and since the 1960s a bridge has connected the island to the mainland.
