Angola's Atlantic Capital — the Bay of Luanda, oil wealth and Portuguese Creole cuisine, the Marginal promenade, and one of Africa's most expensive cities
Luanda is the capital and largest city of Angola, a sprawling Atlantic port city where Portuguese colonial grandeur, oil-boom glass towers, and Congolese and Creole cultures collide on a bay that remains one of the most dramatically sited capitals in Africa. The Marginal waterfront promenade, the Ilha do Cabo sandbar across the bay, and the Fortress of São Miguel define the colonial center. Angolan food is one of Africa's most underappreciated cuisines: muamba de galinha (palm-oil chicken stew), moamba de ginguba (peanut paste stew), and caldeirada (Portuguese-style fish stew) evolved from ce…
Luanda was founded by the Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais in 1575 — making it one of the oldest European colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa and the longest-continuously inhabited European settlement on the continent outside of South Africa. For over three centuries, Luanda was the primary administrative and trading center of Portuguese Angola and one of the most important ports in the Atlantic slave trade; over 4 million enslaved Africans were shipped from the Bay of Luanda to the Americas. Angola fought a bitter 14-year war of independence ending in 1975, immediately followed by…