From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Town in Mozambique
Stone Town
(
Portuguese
:
Cidade de Pedra
) is a town situated towards the northern end of the
Island of Mozambique
.
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
by the fifteenth century. In 1514,
Duarte Barbosa
noted that the town had a Muslim population and that they spoke the same Swahili dialect as Angoche.
[1]
Portugal established a trading fort in 1507. It was an important staging post on the maritime journey between
Portugal
and
India
. The Portuguese settlement (later known as Stone Town) was the capital of
Portuguese East Africa
, a distinction it held until 1898,
[2]
when Lourenco Marques (now
Maputo
) became the capital.
Within Stone Town, the
Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte
and the
Fort Sao Sebastiao
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.
[3]
References
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External links
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