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Cidade Velha
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How it came to be
In 1460 Antonio da Noli, a Genoese in Portuguese service, found the island of Santiago, and in 1462 he settled at Ribeira Grande with his family and colonists from the Algarve and Alentejo. It was the first European colonial town in the tropics. The church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário was built in 1495.
The town became a port linking Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Brazil and the Caribbean, and a platform for the Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Vasco da Gama called in 1497, and Christopher Columbus in 1498 on his third voyage. Out of these encounters grew the first fully formed Creole society.
Against privateers the Fort of São Filipe was built between 1587 and 1593. The cathedral, begun in 1556 and completed in 1705, was pillaged in 1712. The capital moved to Praia in 1770, and by the late 18th century the town was known as Cidade Velha, the old city. In 2009 it became Cabo Verde's first World Heritage site.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).