Best Things to Do in Maputo

Maputo blends Lusophone railway grandeur, tropical modernist architecture and lively open-air craft parks with Indian Ocean seafood feasts and easy boat or 4x4 escapes across the bay. Pair a morning heritage walk in the Baixa with a long seafood lunch along the Marginal.

1. Step inside the CFM Central Railway Station (Estação do Caminho de Ferro). Admire the mint-green and cream Beaux-Arts terminus completed in 1910 at Praça dos Trabalhadores, crowned by a 51-metre copper dome, wrought-iron platform canopies and vintage steam locomotives in the railway museum.
2. Inspect Gustave Eiffel's prefabricated Casa de Ferro (Iron House). Visit the bolted sheet-iron residence shipped from Belgium in 1892 for the colonial governor, who quickly found its metal walls far too hot for the African tropics.
3. Walk the ramparts of the Fortaleza de Maputo and Tunduru Gardens. Explore the reddish stone fortress overlooking the bay before strolling under giant cycads and palms in the 1885 Jardim Tunduru designed by British landscape gardener Thomas Honney.
4. Feast on grilled tiger prawns at Mercado do Peixe. Buy fresh prawns, calamari, grouper and rock lobster directly from the fishmongers' slabs on Avenida Marginal and hand them to an adjacent open-air kitchen to be grilled over charcoal with garlic and piri-piri.
5. Shop for ebony carvings and capulanas at FEIMA and Mercado Central. Browse Makonde woodcarvings and batik under the trees of Parque dos Continuadores in Sommerschield, and buy spiced cashews in the 1901 Central Market.
6. Spot Pancho Guedes's "Stiloguedes" modernist buildings in Polana. Walk around Polana to see whimsical mid-century residential blocks such as O Leão Que Ri (The Smiling Lion) decorated with sculptural chimneys and African motifs.
7. Visit the Natural History Museum and Nucleo de Arte. View the unique display of elephant gestation stages inside a neo-Manueline palace, then meet painters and sculptors at Mozambique's oldest artist collective.
8. Cross the Maputo-KaTembe Suspension Bridge for skyline views. Drive or take the passenger ferry across the bay to KaTembe for beachside crab curry looking back at the Maputo towers.
9. Take a boat day trip to Inhaca Island and Portuguese Island. Cruise 35 kilometres across Maputo Bay for coral-reef snorkelling and white sandbars.
10. Track elephants between coastal lagoons in Maputo National Park. Head south of KaTembe into a restored bush-and-beach reserve where elephants, giraffe and zebra roam beside the Indian Ocean.