Stone Town ( pt, Cidade de Pedra) is a town situated towards the northern end of the

Island of Mozambique The Island of Mozambique ( pt, Ilha de Moçambique) lies off northern Mozambique, between the Mozambique Channel and Mossuril Bay, and is part of Nampula Province. Prior to 1898, it was the capital of colonial Portuguese East Africa. With its ric ...

. Pottery found on Mozambique Island indicates that the original town was founded no later than the fourteenth century. According to tradition, the original Swahili population came from Kilwa. The town's rulers had links with the rulers of both Angoche and

Quelimane Quelimane () is a seaport in Mozambique. It is the administrative capital of the Zambezia Province and the province's largest city, and stands from the mouth of the Rio dos Bons Sinais (or "River of the Good Signs"). The river was named when V ...

by the fifteenth century. In 1514,

Duarte Barbosa Duarte Barbosa (c. 14801 May 1521) was a Portuguese writer and officer from Portuguese India (between 1500 and 1516). He was a Christian pastor and scrivener in a '' feitoria'' in Kochi, and an interpreter of the local language, Malayalam. Barbo ...

noted that the town had a Muslim population and that they spoke the same Swahili dialect as Angoche. Portugal established a trading fort in 1507. It was an important staging post on the maritime journey between

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The Portuguese settlement (later known as Stone Town) was the capital of

Portuguese East Africa Portuguese Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique) or Portuguese East Africa (''África Oriental Portuguesa'') were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese colony. Portuguese Mozambique originally ...

, a distinction it held until 1898, when Lourenço Marques (now

Maputo Maputo (), formerly named Lourenço Marques until 1976, is the Capital city, capital, and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a popul ...

) became the capital. Within Stone Town, the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte and the

Fort São Sebastião The Fort of São Sebastião lies at the northern end of Stone Town on the Island of Mozambique. It is the oldest complete fort still standing in sub-Saharan Africa. Construction by the Portuguese began in 1558, and it took about fifty years ...

are two notable old buildings. Between 2010 and 2015, Stone Town's neglected buildings and faded grandeur had been turned around with infrastructure improvements and building restorations.

References

External links

Condé Nast Traveller - Stone Town, Mozambique
Populated places in Mozambique Populated places established in 1507 {{Mozambique-geo-stub